“14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Over the past weeks, we have explored the different aspects of how Jesus blesses us in the Christian life and walk. I can tell you without a doubt that He makes himself real to me in a myriad of ways, and He develops my confidence in Him and His plan. One of the wonderful ways that we are blessed in this Christian life is the promise of a personal God. Not some generic national deity that has no power and no ability to actually help. As the Psalmist tells us in Psalm 115: 5-7,

“They have mouths, but cannot speak; they have eyes, but cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear; they have noses, but cannot smell; they have hands, but cannot feel; they have feet, but cannot walk; they cannot even clear their throats” (Berean Study Bible).

These idols are useless and are worshipped by the very men who made them, a complete turnaround from what should be. We worship the God who made man, but they worship the god that man made. It seems so crazy to us, but if that is all you know, then you are trapped. The Bible offers us the real God, a personal God; one who cares, one who knows, and one who can affect our situations.

• Jesus Our High Priest, verse 14

The High Priest had to offer an offering for his own sin before he could offer one for the sins of the people. He had to acknowledge the fact of his own weaknesses before he could help the people. Jesus is human. Yes, but he never sinned. But He knows what it was like to be tempted. Of course, we know He is also God, but for today we will take a look at how His human existence is a benefit to us.

God has no limitations. As such, there are certain things that He knows but He has never experienced. Jesus came to understand our experience and to then be able to truly help us in this life from experiential knowledge. Jesus experienced hunger, fatigue, thirst, and betrayal. He experienced being hated and despised (in Heaven, He is worshipped and adored). He experienced limitation (in Heaven, He had no limitations). He experienced being accused of evil when He is the very essence of good. He experienced pain, suffering, death, loss, and every other human experience and emotion that you can imagine. He has been there and understands from experience what you and I are going through. Jesus knows it for sure.

We can stand assured that when we come to the Lord in prayer and in real need, He truly understands, and He can sympathize with us and offer genuine comfort from the perspective of experiential knowledge. Jesus can offer us practical solutions. He can offer us honest steps that He knows will make a difference and that will help us get through.

All too often, we do not take the advice that the Holy Spirit gives us, and we make the situation worse than it needs to be. Jesus understands the limitations that we humans have. He understands the frailty of life. He saw death over and over, from Joseph, His dad, to the many Jews around Him and the graves that were a part of the landscape. He understood suffering and poverty. He was poor, He had no money, and He was not very popular. Jesus is more popular today than He was when He walked the earth in the flesh. Jesus can feel what you and I feel, and He can help; He will help, and He wants to help.

• Jesus, Our Mercy and Grace, verse 16

Jesus can and will help if we come and ask for help. If we ask for help while we are being tested and tempted, He will help us to sin less and to avoid sinning as often as we do. When we do fail, He is our Advocate before God the Father.

1 John 2:1-2, “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (NKJV).

Jesus was tempted, and He never sinned. He was tempted like we are in the very same way: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. These are the three ways that we are all tempted.

1 John 2: 15-16, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life— is not from the Father but from the world” (Berean Study Bible).

Jesus is ready, willing, and able to help us to resist our urges to sin. He is ready, willing, and able to help us when we do fail, and no one loves us as He loves us. No one can comfort us like Him. Why? Because we serve a living God, a personal God, one who has felt what we are feeling. He can have compassion on us in our limits, and He can help us to transcend those limitations in His power and in His grace and mercy.

We have a personal God. The relationship I have with Him is individual, just like yours is. It is unique to me and yours to you. This is why Jesus came, not just to save us from our sins, but to offer us true, hands-on love, compassion, and mercy because He understands our limitations and our frailty. He knows our emotions first-hand, He knows our pain first-hand, and He will help. Just ask Him. He stands at the ready to run to your side, first of all, to help you not to fall, but if you do, and sadly, we all do, He is there to pick us up, dust us off, remind us He still loves us, and help us to try again.

Oh, what a loving and merciful God we serve! I pray that you have this kind of God at your side. I am thankful to have Him at my side.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch
Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)
Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

Hebrews 4:11-13

“11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account” (NKJV).

Over the past two weeks, we have talked about rest. No, not sleeping, but resting in the finished work of Jesus that He did on the cross. The rest that comes with our surrender to the Lord Jesus is not just as Savior but as the complete Lord and Master of our lives. We allow Him to take us into the future as He sees fit, no matter how good, bad or ugly, just so long as He is leading. We often read the book of Job and see the turmoil he went through, but we forget that God allowed Job to go there; God allowed Satan to do these things to Job. True rest comes to the conclusion that God is enough. No matter what else happens, God is enough.

We explored the power and person of Jesus in the previous lessons, and we explored true rest in the last few lessons. Today we will look at the Bible, “the Living Word of God.”

Last week during my personal devotion time, the programs I am reading through had me read Psalm 51. In verse 6 of that Psalm, King David makes an enlightening statement that has stuck with me.

“Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts” (NKJV).

God desires that we have inner truth – that we be built on truth from the inside out. This is difficult; we often lie to ourselves, and for many of us, we have built a very convincing facade that covers who we truly are inside.

I have been in the ministry for just over 38 years; people see me preach and teach the word of God, and I work hard at being very disciplined in the Bible. But inside, I am truly a shy and often insecure person. Because of this, I tend to over-study and arm myself to be challenged so that I am not caught off-guard. I am detailed, and I have to be reminded not to be too long-winded; it is a fault of mine. God wants us to be true about who and what we are. He wants us to be truthful about whose we are and to live lives of truth. To equip us in this pursuit, God has given us His Holy Word, the Bible.

• Powerful, verse 12

God is All-Powerful, and His Word is as well. It is still transforming lives all over the world to this very day. Millions of other books have been written about the struggles of mankind, but in all of that, the Bible deals with all of the struggles of men and mankind. It does so by looking at the lives of real men and women from eras covering 4,000 years of history, and it allows us into the most intimate aspects of their lives. We get into the heads and into the hearts, and we see the conflicts that lived in their homes. We see love, hate, friendship, betrayal, lies, truths, wars, and on and on.

The Bible covers family, marriage, sexual attraction, how to maintain it in a marriage, how to raise children, run a business, find friends, how to treat money, sadness, and depression, and it is honest about man’s ultimate needs and God’s gracious provision of salvation in Jesus. No one has ever gotten to the end, and no one has ever exhausted its wisdom. And for sure, no one has proven it to be wrong.

• Sharp, verse 12

The Bible gets to the point. It is upfront and blunt with mankind; we are evil to the core. God is perfect to the core, and the gulf between us is unpassable without Jesus. The Bible makes the way and method of salvation clear; Jesus and only Jesus. No one else and nothing else matters. God owns Heaven, and only He has the right to determine how we get there. He has determined that Jesus is the only door into Heaven. No other word matters, no other opinion matters, and there is no room for arguments. You can come Jesus’ way or not at all.

The Bible cuts to the core; it demands that men love their wives, it demands that true leaders first be great servants, and it tells us that the truly rich do not have a lot of money but that they have Jesus and are wholly surrendered to Him. The Bible tells us that it is not what you do that matters but what you think inside (thought and intents of the heart), thus eroding the façade that too many live in. We are called to love God and others more than ourselves, the very opposite of the world’s philosophy. The Word of God forces you to either live in a lie of rebellion or to be humble and ask God to change you; either way, you will never be the same once you hear it.

• Nowhere to Hide, verse 13

Everyone on this planet or who has ever walked on this planet will be judged according to the Bible, the Word of God. No one will escape; even the saved will have their saved lives judged by the concepts and precepts of the Bible. See 2 Corinthians 5:10, NKJV.

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

Now, if you are saved and have the Holy Spirit living in you, there is no hell in your future. But you will still have to give an account of your life. To those without Jesus, you too will be judged from this book or the books as John describes them in Revelation 20:12, KJV.

“And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”

No one gets by without being judged by the Word of God. On that day, all will stand level, kings and beggars, illiterate and educated, free and slaves, all under the Holy Word of God. Go, get your Bible, read it, study it, cherish it and let the Holy Spirit guide you to living for, in, and by the power of Jesus and in His clearly expressed Word. We will be judged by what it says and what it calls us to be and do. No excuses.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch
Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)

Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca