The Rooted Podcast

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How do unholy people approach a holy God? find it really cool that it's foreshadowing all the way back in Genesis of the New Covenant. They may sort of in some way resemble what Jesus later comes to do in a much superior way. It's significant, isn't it, that the high priest had to repeat his work year by year. And Jesus doesn't have to do that. I was wondering about reverence for the presence of God. I don't want to say that the reverence for it has been lost, but it's just such a different relationship to it, isn't it?

So you have this kind of Old Testament sacrificial backdrop to the whole central moment of what it is to be a Christian. You're listening to The Rooted Podcast from Bible Society. In each series, we take a closer look at a theme or book of the Bible and explore its relevance in our lives today. This is our series on Hebrews. Hey everyone, welcome back to The Rooted Podcast. We've been looking through the book of Hebrews because the Hebrews edition of Rooted has just come out.

I'm Noelle and I'm joined by Esther and we're here with Stuart, who is our special guest, who we're really happy to have on. Stuart wrote for the Hebrews Rooted Journal and so we thought it'd just be fun to have him on for a conversation about Hebrews. So Stuart, thank you for being here. Thank you for inviting me. Do you want to just tell us a bit about what you do, who you are? Yeah, sure. So I've worked at the Bible Society for a couple of years. My role is Catholic Engagement Officer.

So I sit within our sort of domestic mission work, working with different churches, and I sort of spherehead our partnership with the Catholic Church, which over a number of years has taken the form of an initiative called The God Who Speaks. And we are involved in lots of different aspects of Catholic life and are making ourselves more known in the Catholic world and promoting the Bible in that context. That's great. Yeah. Thanks for...

Thanks here and thanks for writing for The Rooted Journal. We've sort of worked our way through the first really three, four chapters of Hebrews. And today we wanted to have a conversation about a theme that comes up in Hebrews quite often, which is Jesus as High Priest. This is something that the writer touches on throughout the book. So we want to talk a bit about that. And we're also going to touch on Melchizedek, who again comes up for the first time, I think, in chapter five.

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But then also in chapters seven and eight, we're just going to have a look at who Melchizedek was and why he's important. Just have a conversation around why this is important for us today as we're reading Hebrews. So we thought it would be interesting just to start with talking about what a high priest was in ancient Judaism. How did the high priest function? And what do we sort of know about the role of a high priest? So Stuart, do want to just start us off talking a bit about that? Yeah, sure.

The Old Testament deals with a problem, which we get right at the beginning of Genesis with the fall of Adam and Eve, which is how do unholy people approach a holy God? And the priesthood system that we get outlined for us really in the Book of Leviticus is an answer to that problem. The priests, and particularly the high priest, you can think of them like a bridge. They bridge the people to God.

in a safe way so that the people can approach God without burning up in the fire of His Holiness. And the High Priest had a particular role to play within that. We think particularly of the Day of Atonement. The High Priest is the one that could go into the presence of God, which was symbolized in the Tabernacle as the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was. He could go into that once a year. Nobody else could.

and intercede for the people in the way that God had outlined. So he is that bridge between the people and their sort of unclean unholiness, which is not necessarily sinful, and the holiness that is God. In Exodus, you have this sort of inauguration of the Levitical priesthood. So that specifically being, know, descendants of Levi like Aaron and his sons, they are kind of the first priests serving God.

serving the people in the tabernacle that they make after the exile. But you kind of, do, you know, we're going to talk about Melchizedek later and he is described as being a priest of God most high and that's before the liturgical priesthood. And you you even, you think about some of the roles of a priest, like offering sacrifices on behalf of the people, things like that, teaching the law, but you do have people making sacrifices like Noah, you know, he comes out of the ark.

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and he sacrifices to God. He builds an altar of sacrifices to God. Some people believe Job is the oldest kind book of the Bible, but you hear about him offering sacrifices to God and that's obviously well before this Levitical priesthood. So yeah, think that was something that as I was reading and preparing for this, just really thinking like the role of priest isn't new, but this is a special priesthood that

And it's part of that mosaic covenant, isn't it? You know, God, after the exiles, not after the exile, after the Exodus, asked them to build a tabernacle and He creates this system so that He can dwell with His people and they can approach Him. Yeah. Yeah. And I was reading in chapter five, it sort of talks a bit about what a high priest is. This is verse one.

For every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sin." That struck me, gifts and sacrifices. So it's not as if they were just offering sacrifices for atonement, but also just gifts to God. He can deal gently with the ignorant and misguided since He Himself also is beset with weakness.

and because of it, he is obligated to offer sacrifices for sins as for the people, so also for himself. So there's also this understanding that the priest was able to deal with people and help people who were in need or, I mean, this has ignorance or misguided. So there's that aspect of it too, almost a sort pastoral aspect to it as well. So the high priest was offering sacrifices as well, which we're going to get into sort of talking about the theme of sacrifice in one of our next episodes.

Because it's interesting, the writer of Hebrews, it's interesting how he talks about Jesus as high priest and as sacrifice. Jesus is both. But we're going to touch on sacrifice a bit later. Yeah, and just going back to that kind of initial bit in chapter five, I think this is sort of a beginning of a really, it's kind of an extended explanation, isn't it? Which he said, I'm going to explain things that you should know.

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And he's reminding them of the role of the high priest and then he'll go on to draw this comparison with how Jesus fulfills that role, but even better, how he's like a superior high priest. And I think some of those details about them, you know, how he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins, even as a high priest, is then to later make the point that Jesus didn't have to offer sacrifices for himself because he never sinned. But these high priests are human.

they may sort of in some way resemble what Jesus later comes to do in a much superior way. It's important we understand that these are humans that although they've been chosen for a special role, they're not necessarily special people. definitely. Yeah, so there are lots of comparisons sort of being made here between what a high priest was and then Jesus as high priest.

I guess there's this great importance in the fact that Jesus is called our High Priest because He has now become the mediator for us. And there's this understanding that we still need one. We're brought close to the Father through Jesus, but Jesus Himself is our mediator. Instead of a human being afraid to sort of go into the Holy of Holies, which I imagine would have been a terrifying experience, instead it says that we can, in the last verse of chapter four,

we can draw near to the throne of grace with boldness because Jesus is our mediator. So there's this great change that I the author is trying to make, this great point of how things have changed for us because Jesus is in this role. So it must have been a huge deal to readers then reading it as well. Yeah, I think so. It's significant, isn't it, that the high priest had to repeat his work year by year. And Jesus doesn't have to do that. Jesus goes,

into the heavenly sanctuary, into the presence of the Father, into the real Holy of Holies, which the earthly Holy of Holies is only just an image of. But Hebrews is at pains to say that a priest has to have something to offer. So if Jesus is a priest forever, as he is, he still needs something to offer. So what does he offer? He offers himself. He offers his blood continuously. And that's symbolic of interceding for us all the time.

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And this is where our confidence comes from, that you mentioned at the end of chapter four, that Jesus is never failing, never flagging in offering his own gift of himself to the Father, reminding the Father in a way of what he's done and interceding and pleading for us as he does so, which is so amazing to think of, that kind of constancy that Jesus has that we don't.

And it again reflects back onto the Old Testament sacrifices. Because when you read through the Old Testament sacrifices as they're laid out, it can be a bit boring to read them because we don't think in those terms anymore. But one of the things you can do is identify different stages in how a sacrifice worked. And you can broadly say that the person would bring their sacrifice, they'd be presented at the temple. The sacrifice would then be killed, it's blood collected.

and the blood would then be sprinkled on the altar. And that was how the sacrifice worked. And for most sacrifices, there was another element as well, which was eating part of the sacrifice, having communion in that sense, having fellowship around a meal. And in Jesus' sacrifice, you can kind of apply the same logic. So Jesus is presented, you think Pontius Pilate saying, behold the man, here is the man. He's presented.

He dies on the cross, he rises again, and then he ascends into heaven, which is the bit I think we often forget. And when he ascends into heaven, he is going into the Holy of Holies as the High Priest, taking with himself his blood, his offering, and sprinkling it on the altar in heaven. So you have this kind Old Testament sacrificial backdrop to the whole central moment of what it is to be a Christian, the death and resurrection of Christ.

It's an amazing thing, really. I think it's so interesting too how in this new covenant, the things of Judaism, a lot of them are not necessarily done away with. Like all of these sort of rituals and tradition is actually almost just fulfilled through Christ, but it's not necessary. Like you're saying, He still has to have an offering. He's still going into the Holy of Holies. There's still this system that's been preserved almost, but it's just been made better.

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I think that's really beautiful. Yeah. I mean, because you were saying like the year on year, the priests had to keep making these offerings. even beyond that, like when a priest died, there'll be the succession after him, his sons or whatever, they would become sort of the priest in his place and take on his role. Whereas I think Hebrews makes quite a bit, but it does make a very significant deal of the fact that

The reason why Jesus doesn't need a successor in His role as High Priest is because of His resurrection, because He's still alive and He's alive forever. So He's able to make that perpetual intercession for us that you talked about, Stuart, because He is alive forever. But I love how Hebrews kind of, doesn't just major on that aspect, but it also kind of, in chapter five, so this is verse seven, it says, in the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up

prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his reverence. So, you know, earlier in Hebrews, we've got that idea unpacked that Jesus is fully God, he's fully divine, but he's also fully man. And here it's like, here as a man, here's how he fully kind of fulfilled that role in the most reverent way possible of high priest.

And it makes me think of him in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying just so earnestly, knowing the sacrifice that he's about to make and saying to God, I'm willing to do this. Your will be done, not mine. Reading the accounts of the sort of prayers that he prayed from the Gospel of John, and just you really get that sense from those passages of what kind of

high priestly prayers he was praying. that, mean, I think so many of us are really moved anyway when we read those passages. But when you see it as this like other picture of him in this role, it's not just him praying a nice prayer because he's Jesus and he knows what kind of prayers will please his father, but he's doing it for a very specific purpose. So then as we move on and now we have this idea of Jesus as high priest that the author has presented to us.

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For the first time in chapter seven, Melchizedek is sort of mentioned more fully. so Melchizedek is really interesting character. He's in Hebrews, he's also in Genesis. He's first mentioned in Genesis chapter 14, comes as a royal priest to bless Abraham and then disappears after that. We don't see him again until he's mentioned in Psalms. He's mentioned in Psalm 110 and then here in Hebrews. And so he's sort of this...

mysterious, spooky character almost that appears and then disappears. So maybe we could just talk about what his significance is. What role is he playing and why is the author of Hebrews bringing him up? Why is this important for him to be a part of this sort of conversation? Yeah. Melchizedek is, you're right, he is mysterious. His name means either King of Salem or King of Righteousness, depending on if you think Salem is a place name.

because later on, of course, that becomes Jerusalem. So we're talking about that kind of location. But the interesting thing is, I think, if you go into a number of old churches where they've got old paintings on the walls, you'll often find near the sanctuary where the Eucharist or Communion is celebrated, an icon or a picture of Melchizedek. Because what does he offer? He offers bread and wine. What does Jesus offer? Bread and wine.

at the Last Supper, what do Christians still do? Bread and wine. So there's that connection and the early church made that connection very strongly and said, look, here's a foreshadowing of what we do right the way back in Genesis. But there's another aspect as well, which I think is really striking, which is that Melchizedek is both a king and a priest. And if you look later on in the scriptures, those two roles are very clearly

demarcated, they're separated in the Mosaic Covenant. So Aaron is not a king. He's not a kingly figure. His tribe is not a kingly tribe. And when someone comes along and tries to combine those roles, and you think of Saul in the book of Samuel, it goes horribly wrong. But then you get David, who does kind of at times combine those roles. And so you get Melchizedek popping up in the Psalms, which is a Davidic book.

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you get this kind of connection that, okay, so there's maybe some kind of there to David, to the line of David. And what's Jesus's line? The line of David. So you get all these different threads that are kind of coming together in a mysterious way. And I emphasize mysterious because it is, you know, sort of reading between the lines at times. But then it's more fully explored here in Hebrews. And if you just sort of did a search, read the Bible for the number of times our kids at Eccapiers, as you said, it's really

know, just two times in the Old Testament and in Hebrews. you see, hang on a minute, this long discussion of Melchizedek in Hebrews, where's that come from? And I think it's drawing together a lot of these themes that have run throughout the scriptures, maybe just under the surface. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if the writer of Hebrews, this was sort of an analogy or a comparison that they particularly wanted to make that not necessarily

know, perhaps it wasn't like a common idea, but he really wanted to bring it out because he felt that said something powerful. I mean, he definitely talks about Melchizedek in a mysterious manner because he kind of says, this is chapter seven, verse three, he's without father or mother or genealogy, which you're like, how is this possible? know, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the son of God, he continues a priest forever.

In the ESV study Bible, it sort of unpacks this and it's not like vehemently saying it can only mean this, but it's saying it's most likely that he does have a father and a mother, but it's just that it's not recorded in the scriptures. Whereas like the Levitical priesthood, we've got detailed genealogies about that and you could trace it back, it's recorded.

We don't have those details. We also don't have any kind of details about the end of Melchizedek's priesthood or any kind of succession coming after him. So in that sense, it appears to be unending. And that's how you can then say that there's a resemblance between Melchizedek and Jesus, that his priesthood really never ends and it's superior to everything that's come before even Melchizedek, but definitely the Levitical priesthood.

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So yeah, I think that's interesting to think about because you could see that as a stumbling block if you become obsessed with like, well, how could he be without father and mother? But I don't think that's the point that the author is really trying to draw out necessarily. Yeah, it's almost continuing how earlier in the book the author was sort of pressing on Jesus as being superior to angels and the law and Moses and these things.

It's almost a continuation of that, seems like Melchizedek is shown as this priest who stands above the sort of imperfect system of Levitical priesthood and sacrifice, just like Jesus does. And yeah, it's also cool, I find it really cool, this foreshadowing all the way back in Genesis of the New Covenant. I know there are lines running all through the Old Testament, but this one's so interesting that Melchizedek is sort of the foreshadowing of the New Covenant.

No, I like what you said about superiority. I think that's really important because one of the things that sort of held true in the ancient world is if something was older, it was considered to have more authority. And so you get the Levitical priesthood, which is established in the Mosaic covenant. But the author here is at pains to say, Jesus's priesthood is of an order that's older than that. So it's superior to that set up because it's older.

And you get in things of that elsewhere in the Bible as well, when Jesus is talking about marriage laws and says, it wasn't that way from the beginning. So he's referring to something older than his opponents or his interlocutors were saying. This is what we're arguing. He's saying, no, no, no, no, there's an older stratum here. You can almost take it back to C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia. It's the deep magic, the old stuff. There's authority there.

And Melchizedek has this sense of antiquity and he's ancient, he's contemporary with Abraham, but he's in some sense superior to Abraham because he blesses Abraham. So you get that kind of dynamic going on, I think. Yeah. And then you get that whole business of Abraham kind of giving a tithe of what he's got from that. He'd been in a conflict, hadn't he? There were spoils from this conflict and he gives a tenth of everything.

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Melchizedek and the author of Hebrews goes on about that in quite a lot of detail, but he's making that point that, know, Melchizedek was of a higher status than Abraham, know, who God made a covenant with, made promises to him and all of that. He's really making that point that yeah, Melchizedek, even Abraham sort of deferred to Melchizedek. And just to go on about what you saying about like, you know, the old magic or the antiquity.

It makes you think about Revelation where Jesus is revealed as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. So, you know, from the most ancient time to forever. It's actually really exciting to read this because I think many times I've read Hebrews and I have just been like, I don't know what this is talking about. But actually the more you dig into it, the more it glorifies Jesus and the more kind of excited it makes you about,

who he is, what he's done, the role he plays in salvation. Yeah, that's really good. I guess my next question that I wonder as we're sort of talking about this is what does this mean for us today? So I think we're reading it very differently to how the original readers would have been reading it. I was thinking even about when we were talking about high priests earlier, they wouldn't have really needed an explanation as to what the author was talking about, which is why I think there isn't too much of one in here.

But to us, we really do. And then for us, we're reading about more kids probably differently to how they would have been. I think that is true. you know, way back in chapter five, where he's like saying, you've become dull of hearing and he gets frustrated with them about the fact that they haven't even grasped the basics of Christianity and they need to, well, not Christianity, but, you know, salvation. They need to move on to solid food. He does say something like, this is hard to explain. I will explain what I mean by, you know, Jesus as priest and

and that comparison with Melchizedek. So the fact that he has to go into this detailed explanation, I don't necessarily think we should just be like, yeah, they totally got all this. They understood it immediately and it's just us not operating under the same system. don't get it. I think they would have understood the explanation more immediately, but I don't think it was necessarily something they just knew and grasped. It's as if he's trying to tell them something new about something that maybe they think they already know.

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or that they know a bit about, they understand the structure of it, but he's telling them something new about how Jesus comes into it or who Jesus is in what they know of Judaism, basically. Sure. And we've got that overarching thing, that sense that the author seems to think they were in danger of backsliding or sliding back into the old ways under the old covenant, becoming too obsessed with mosaic law, the ritualism and all of that.

He does kind of come out and say really clearly in this, said, like, old covenant is done. We've got a new covenant. That change that you were talking about, how he really tries to stress things have changed and you're now under a new system. So I think that was something they hadn't understood and he's really having to bring home. There's been a seismic shift in how to live in relationship with God and it's

You know, don't be afraid that we've lost the old ways and the old system because new systems better. You can draw nearer to God with this and you have this forever confidence in salvation. You know, this anchor for our souls that is Jesus. You know, that's this stability in our state of being saved and it can't be taken away from us. Yeah, I think that's very helpful. And to me, it links actually to how we evangelize.

in our culture today. Because there's a sense, I think, among a lot of people who aren't Christian, that they have some kind of understanding, even sort of subconscious about who Jesus is and what Christianity is. But our message is actually, no, you don't really grasp what we're trying to say, the magnitude of who Jesus really is and what he's done. He's not just a good guy. He's not just a moral teacher.

not just a historical figure. He is, as Hebrews is telling us, he is the son of God. He's got the son to flip it around. And that message builds on the structure that people have that, okay, we live in a post-Christian society. They know the name Jesus. They know the work Christians, so on. But putting content into that is our job really as Christians today, to those around us who have become.

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of hearing to quite a bit. Yeah, that's really good, very good insight. I guess when I was thinking about it, the significance of it, I guess I just think about access to God and how it's so easy now for us. You know, we can just think something and pray to God and it can be simple.

or we think about God's presence coming to dwell on the earth. And we think about that when we're in worship services or when we're at church, His presence is with us. And it's almost this thing that's become very, at least in my sort of worldview, something that's very easy to access. And not that it isn't still just as amazing or just as holy, but because it's so easy to access now,

Yeah, I guess there's something really beautiful in that, obviously, because of what Jesus has done. It's amazing. But I also was just thinking about reverence, and I was wondering about reverence for the presence of God, because it's so easily seen in the Old Testament and in the Bible, of like, you know, it was terrifying to go into the Holy of Holies, and if you didn't do this, and you didn't do this, you could die. And there's this sort of great reverence and not speaking the name of God, things like that.

I was thinking about how now it's so accessible to us. I don't want to say that the reverence for it has been lost, but it's just such a different relationship to it, isn't it? And I was just sort of thinking about that as I was reading. Yeah, I totally agree because you can't really have that full reverence for God unless you first understand what you've sort of been saved from. It's Hebrews 4, just before we get the little bit about how Jesus is the great high priest.

The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. So that's a picture first of understanding, like we are all going to have to stand before God. Like all of our thoughts, intentions, actions.

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will be completely exposed before him. He knows everything. And there's that idea, you even under the old covenant, under the Mosaic law, we know we've fallen short. And the law in itself can only show us how far we fall short. It can't make us perfect. And so this picture is like terrifying and bad news, except that we have a great high priest who can

bridge that gap like Stuart said right in the start, the world of the priest is like a bridge between man and God. And here is our perfect bridge. Hebrews talks about us being like, you know, Jesus sees us as his brothers and sisters. You know, we are the children of God alongside him and we share in his inheritance. So yeah, that you can't really grasp that and then respond with the reverence that you're talking about unless you actually have really thought about

what it would mean not to have Jesus as our high priest and our intercessor. And I think, yeah, certainly in kind of the church circles that I've been used to moving in, we so want to major on the good news that sometimes we do a little bit skate over the bad news because we worry that people will like mishear us.

Especially because if someone feels like we're saying to them, decide now, will you accept Jesus as your savior? And they might not be ready at that point. So then it sounds to them like you're saying you're just sharing the bad news and that you're gatekeeping the good news. We have to find ways to share that and to talk about it because the good news is so good. And you can really see how good it is only when you know the whole picture.

Yeah, I think you're right. it's holding things together, which is sometimes difficult. It's holding the bad news and the good news. It's holding the reverence and the familiarity. It's holding all these different things together without losing one or the other. It makes me think of a saint I'm very fond of, Saint Therese, who we call the little flower. And she had this wonderful kind of childlike spirituality. And she talks of how she would

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in prayer, going to the presence of the great King, you know, into the awesome majesty of the Father, this holiness that we've been speaking of, and she'll walk right up to his throne, up to his knee, and then just hold her arms up until her father picks her up and puts her on his knee. And it's that beautiful then holding together of His Majesty of the immensity and the awesomeness of God, and that He's still our loving and compassionate Father, together at the same time.

So good. We're going to end there. Thank you Stuart so much for coming on the podcast and talking with us. Pleasure. Thank you. We will be back next week for another episode. We realized we sort of talked about so many things in this episode and there's so much in these chapters that we can't possibly cover in the amount of time that we have, but we would love to hear any questions that you have off the back of this episode. So if you have any for any of us, even for Stuart.

He's around. We see him all the time. So you can send them in and we would love to read them. So you can send in any questions you have. You can either do that in comments on YouTube or Spotify, or you can send them in to biblesociety.org.uk forward slash read questions. And we will potentially do a bit of a Q &A episode if we can, if we have the time before we start our next series. But we would love to do that. Thank you so much for listening. If you love the podcast, you can leave us a review or rating, and we will be back next week for another episode.