"Our Need and His Ability" Part One

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 874 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God! I'm sorry I don't know how to follow something like that...the Lord is in our midst, isn't He? I appreciate Him. Praise God! Turn to Hebrews chapter 7. Hebrews chapter 7. And I don't know exactly where I want to begin...there's a very familiar verse I want to get to. But the writer here throughout Hebrews, as we've said many times is dealing with the comparison between the old covenant of laws that was given through Moses and what was given through Jesus Christ and how much better the second is than the first.

And we know that in the old covenant there were laws that were given. People were commanded to do this, and do that, and not do that, and if they sinned, they were given a whole system of sacrifice. And there were priests. You couldn't just go to God for yourself in those days. If you wanted to actually go and do something about a need that you felt or you knew you'd sinned, why you would have to go to a priest and say, will you go and offer the sacrifice to God? I can't come to Him. I have no access to God. But you are my representative to go before Him and so I give you this animal, perhaps it might have been in a given circumstance.

And the priest then would go and he would offer the sacrifice in the prescribed manner and God actually recognized that. God would actually see the act of faith really is what it was on the part of the person coming to that priest. Because He had instituted this system, there would actually be a forgiveness of that sin. But now something has changed. Something has dramatically changed. When Jesus cried on the cross, it is finished, do you know what happened in the temple?

( congregational response ).

Yeah. There was something pretty dramatic. You see in the temple, and this was a mirror of something that had previously existed in the Tabernacle, there was a very special place. It was called the holy of holies. And there was a huge curtain that shielded that from anybody's eyes. I mean the common people didn't get anywhere near this. But even the priests themselves...nobody went in there. That was the place where God's presence was. You just didn't go in there. Once a year the high priest would go in, but he wouldn't dare go in unless he had the proper sacrifice. God was showing the holiness and the necessity of sacrifice.

But you know when Jesus cried, it is finished, that curtain was torn, wasn't it? And it was not just torn any old way, it was torn from the top to the bottom. Now that was an obvious picture to the people that God was the one who was opening the way into the holiest place through Jesus. Praise God for that! Praise God because the new covenant is so much better.

And so I don't want to get into a lot of this detail here, but he goes into the story of Melchizedek, this mysterious man who appeared in the Old Testament account of Abraham. He was a king of a place called Salem. And, when Abraham went out to rescue Lot who had been taken captive by some kings, some raiders, he came back and the scripture says that this man was a priest of the Most High God, and the Bible doesn't tell us any more about him than that. He just was somebody that God had a relationship with and everybody knew it. And so Abraham, out of respect for the God who had given him this victory, he took a tenth of all the spoils that had come back and he offered that to this man who was a priest of God.

Well, that's...if that had been the end of it, I guess that would have been the end of it, I mean, it would have been just an interesting little side-light in history. But you know, later on David was anointed of God to say...to speak of one who was going to come who was after the order of Melchizedek. All of the other priests were of the order of Aaron. In order to be a priest in Israel, you had to be descended from Aaron. And there was a particular covenant, a particular sense of responsibility that was placed upon his descendants to represent the people toward God.

But this one who was to come was not part of that system, was he? He was above and beyond. He was simply one that God had designated as a priest, just as He did with Melchizedek. And so Melchizedek becomes sort of an illustration, a type of the one who was to come. And so he has a better priesthood than existed under the law.

And...let's see, verse 18...it's hard to pick it up. It says, "The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless. (NIV). That's one thing about the law. It could never change anybody. You were still just powerless, helpless sinner. All you could do was to recognize, oh God, You've given me Your laws, but I have no power--no power whatever to change or to be anything different than what I am. All I can do is just come and offer the sacrifices and believe that Your promise will be fulfilled in me, because I've come, You will forgive me.

But here the writer says, "The former regulation..." That's the law. "...is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God." Thank God that we have a message this morning that has hope in it at the heart of it!

( congregational response ).

Do you need hope this morning?

( congregational response ).

Yeah, I do. Praise God! I need it every single day because if I begin to look at anything but the promises of God and the provision that He has made for me, I will quickly lose hope and so will you, unless you are totally blind and you just don't have a clue what's going on. And I'll tell you, we need to have our eyes opened and be honest, don't we? So here's a better hope that's been introduced.

And he says, "And it was not without an oath!" In other words, this hope that was established was not without an oath. "Others became priests without any oath, but he became a priest with an oath when God said to him: The Lord has sworn...The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind." Praise God! Don't you like a God who doesn't change His mind about something like this? He doesn't look at you and say, whoops, you've gone too far. I have to rethink this now. I thought...I'm really setting out to do a good thing here, but I just didn't plan on this and you just...I'm gonna change my mind. This isn't gonna work.

Now we do that, but He doesn't. He has sworn by an oath and will not change His mind. "You..." speaking of Christ, "...are a priest forever." Forever, praise God! "Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant." Praise God! I like that word 'guarantee,' don't you? Especially when God's the one behind it. That helps a lot...'cause He's able to guarantee things and nobody can say, now wait a minute, You can't do that.

"Now there have been many of those priests..." speaking, of course, of the ones under the law...many of 'em, and the reason is that, "...since death prevented them from continuing in office." I mean, you can imagine somebody who gets used to going to a certain priest and one day he goes in and said, where's Zachariah today? And they say, I'm sorry, he passed away. So maybe the priest that he related to has gone off the scene, but this one doesn't go, nothing happens to him.

"...But because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able...." Therefore...because of all this, the oath, the fact that He lives forever, all of these things put together...the authority of God behind everything that happened through Christ, everything that He offers to us in the way of hope, in the way of promises, because of that, "...he is able to save completely..." to the uttermost, any way you want to put it, "...those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them."

You can always go to Him. You won't go and find, oh, He died. He's...something's changed. He's gone off the scene. We've got another priest in here and he doesn't quite have it together. No, this priest is always there! Always! Now I...I was gonna say, I don't know about you, but I suspect that I do because I'm made of the same stuff...that we are prone as God shows us the depth of our need, to lose heart and to lose hope and to experience at least the emotions of feeling...of really getting focused on the wrong things.

How many times do you see something in yourself and God shows you something. You didn't even know it was there. You didn't really know the depth of it and all of a sudden your eyes are opened and you say, my God! I just had no idea the enormity of my need. I am weak, I am helpless, I am hopeless in myself. Oh God, is there any hope for me? And even as a believer you can experience those emotions, and we do.

But oh, I thank God for this truth. And this is the one thing that gives me hope this morning. He is able to save me completely because I'm coming to God through Him, I'm not coming to God based upon my ability to do anything about my situation. I have no ability to do anything about my situation and neither do you. You know, coming to God and experiencing His salvation is all about our need and there's no way that anyone is gonna come to God who does not feel their need and does not see their need of salvation.

You see there's two main parts to someone coming to God. That's the first one. You've got to know that you are a hopeless, helpless sinner, that you have absolutely no hope of anything in the way of God and standing rightly before Him, you have no hope in yourself. And if something doesn't change that you have no power to make happen, you are lost. That's the starting point. But oh, I am so glad today---I am so glad that God never shows us our need without correspondingly showing us His answer to our need.

( congregational amens ).

And so His word to us is don't ever get stuck on the need! Don't you look at your circumstances, your history, your anything and say, it's impossible. I will never change. Nothing will ever be the way it should be. You know when we think that way, we are looking at things naturally, of course, but what we are doing is measuring natural resources against a need. I see this need, this weakness in me, let's say. And it's there, and I try and I try and I try and it never changes. Oh, it's hopeless.

Well that's exactly what Paul discovered in Romans chapter 7. I mean you think about Paul...there's probably never been a religious person on the planet who was any more zealous, who had a stronger will to do what he thought was right, than Paul did. I mean, here's an example God set before everyone of us, of a man who had everything geared...I mean there was no double-mindedness about Paul. If Paul saw something that there was to be done, he gave it everything he had.

But what was the result of his giving it everything he had? When I want to do good, evil is present. "...The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." (KJV). Oh God, help me, wretched man that I am. And God showed him what he was. The best among men, we are absolutely helpless before God. But oh, I thank God that in the face of such a situation, he offers One who is able, not just to save barely...not just to slip us through by the skin of our teeth, not just to sort of grade us on the curve and let us slide into heaven, this is One who is able--able to save completely those who come to God by Him. I need somebody who can do a thorough job, don't you?

( congregational response ).

I'll tell you, the Lord has to let us feel some of these things and I'll tell you, I was feeling lower than a snake's belly for a while yesterday afternoon. And just looking at myself, looking at my need...and the devil's just piling it on and of course the more you look, the bigger it grows, the more hopeless it gets. And all of a sudden into my mind came this simple thought. He is able to save me completely!

And you know, it's got to get beyond something we just believe as a bible proposition, just as some vague truth that's just out there somewhere. He is able to save me! It's got to become personal where we begin to confess in the face of the hopelessness of the appearance of our need, Lord, You are able! Oh God, I see this thing in me, or I see this circumstance, whatever it is, I see it, Lord. But I also see You. Lord, You have brought me to a place that is humanly impossible.

Do you know that's what salvation is all about? We just don't think that way. We somehow imagine that if God would just tell us what to do, we'd do it and everything would be great. But it wouldn't. It does not work that way. It is salvation. It is coming to a place where...the situation is absolutely...it's not just difficult. It's not just a challenge. It's hopeless. It's utterly, completely hopeless in ourselves.

But it's into that situation that Jesus steps in and says, all right you know what the situation is. You know where you're at. You know what's going on. Now it's time to look to me and confess, yes Lord, I'm helpless. I need You. Oh I need You to be my priest right now, to go to God, to take Your own blood, to cleanse all the stuff that's wrong with me. Oh Lord, help me. You are a priest who is always there. You always pray for me. You know what I go through, You were down here. You lived among men. You experienced the weaknesses that I know. You are able to be that kind of a priest that will understand and help me. Oh, You're the One I need, Lord. Oh I'll tell you, salvation is all about, here's us and here's Him. And we go down and He goes up, until we're nothing and He's everything.

( congregational amens ).

Oh, I praise Him this morning, don't you?

( congregational praise ).

The Word is all about examples of this simple principle of God reaching out in hope to hopeless situations. How many times...of course, just in circumstances, that's one area. You can be so overwhelmed with circumstances that you say, there ain't no way. But yet the Word is full of circumstances where there was no way and God made a way, because He's not bound by any of the laws that operate down here. He can step in do what He wants. If you're backed up against a Red Sea, He can open that, if that's what He wants to do. That's no barrier to Him. If you're thrown into a fire, tied up, is that a barrier to Him? No! If He wants to He can leave you walking around with the Son of God in there with no bonds and not even a smell of fire on you.

What do you think God has given us these examples in His Word for? Over and over again the stories that we hear and they're not just stories, these are things that happened to real people, real people just like you and just like me. And I guarantee that many of those people looked...went into those circumstances just...oh, my God, there ain't no way this is gonna happen. Nothing is gonna change these circumstances, but God stepped in. And God said, all right now it's time, let Me show you what I can do. I have allowed this to get to the point where you have no hope in any other direction except just to say...just to look up and say, Lord help. And now it's time for Me to step on the scene and you will know that you won this battle, you got extricated from this circumstance because I moved.

( congregational amens ).

Because I...you put your trust in Me and I worked. Praise God! I'm thinking of some of the people that Jesus encountered. I mean what a testament to the love of God, to the mercy of God, to reach out to people that just had no hope. You know, what does...what did the Syrophenician woman have in the way of hope? She had a demon possessed child. Was it a daughter, I think? And there she was, she wasn't even an Israelite. Jesus was not even particularly sent to her at that point in history. We know the Gospel immediately began to go out, or soon began to go out to the nations of the world, but here she was a foreigner.

She had no hope. There was no witch doctor she could go to, no medicine she could take. But she heard about Jesus. She heard about somebody who had power against demons. She understood what the problem was, and she came to Him, and she cried out, and she cried out until the disciples said get her out of here. We don't want to hear this any more. She's bothering us.

Oh, I'll tell you what, Jesus wasn't bothered. He is never bothered when you cry out to Him in your hour of need...never bothers Him. He never gets aggravated or tired of listening to you cry out to Him. That's music to His ears. Because that's the cry of someone who has no hope but Him and that's exactly what He wants to do because then He can pour in His life and change the situation.

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