Tuesday October 21, 2025 - Priest Prophet

 Chapter 21: Priest Prophet Day 3

Praying the Name of Jesus:

Hebrews 4:14-16 - 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.

Father, 

    I praise You Lord for sending Your Son to be our High Priest and that He knows and understands what it is like to be tempted and He kept from giving into temptation but stood strong in what He believed. 

    Thank You for the forgiveness that You have given to us we do not deserve it. Please help my thoughts and actions to mirror the forgiveness that You give and live a life in that forgiveness. 

    I do not need to confess that I alone can pay for my sins, I am so beyond that, I just pray that I continue to know that the only way to heaven and life is to ask for forgiveness and trust in You to get me where I know I will be but do not deserve. 

    God help me to know that I can come to You and be in You because Jesus takes me there covering my sins with His blood so You can look upon me. I could not stand before You without Jesus doing His part for us. 

    Remember those Russian nesting dolls? When you open the first one You come to another just like it nesting inside, as you open each doll in order, you find a smaller one until finally you reach the last and smallest doll of all a miniature of all the others. 

    I think the Bible often operates like that only in reverse, you start with a nugget of something, a truth, a promise, or a character, then as the Bible progresses you get larger more explicit versions of them, until all the figures and types and shadows finally converge, coming into focus in the life of one particular man. In the life of Jesus. 

    Take the day of atonement for instance every year for thousands of years the Jewish people have celebrated this day as the Holiest day of the year. But maybe it is misleading to say celebrated, for the day of atonement Yon Kippur is a time of fasting and soul searching, of asking God's forgiveness for wrongs seen and unseen.     

    During Jesus' lifetime, and for hundreds of years before that the High priest would bow His head and walk reverentially into the holiest place on earth, the place in the temple that was thought to be the place that God dwelt, he would enter not as a proud man but as a sinner on behalf of sinners, there he would confess his sins, and the sins of all the people, sacrificing animals in order to make things right with God 

    But the forgiveness obtained on that day was only partial, and the ceremony had to be repeated year after year, why, because the only acceptable payment for sin is death and animals cannot pay the price for human sin. But if the high priests offering was meir pocket change in comparison of the size of the debt why did God insist that the ceremony be repeated over and over? 

    God works like life, He starts by giving us mini lessons about how the universe works, showing us, that sin exacts a price, that it produces death and once the people understand this, He makes it clear that we can never pay off the debt their sins have incurred. 

    Then He repeats the lesson year after year to help them understand their predicament but not wanting to frustrate them forever God sent them the only High Priest capable of wiping out the debt completely He sent Jesus who began by immersing Himself in our life and by sharing our sorrows, our hopes, our happiness, our weakness, our temptations. He shared everything but our guilt, so that He could represent us baring us in His heart, without also bearing sin of His own into the presence of God. Instead of placing an animal on the alter, Jesus climbed onto it Himself offering the most precious currency of all His life 

    The next time you sin for most of us that will be today. Ask Christ to forgive you then picture yourself before your great High Priest, imagine Him not as a scolding, disapproving High Priest, but as He is, the one that bears you tenderly in His heart carrying you straight to the Father who forgives you.