Draw Near to the Throne of Grace
Hebrews 4:14–16 – Jesus Is Better
Second Sunday of Advent – December 7th, 2025 (am)
Introduction
The letter of Hebrews is a sermon that weaves together stark warnings against falling away from the faith and strong encouragement to focus on Christ ~ and both are towards the end of helping a struggling Christians persevere in their faith, in the midst of their hardship.
Our passage today follows one of those stark warning passages. It was a warning against rebellious disobedience to God, and, as we just heard read, it concluded by calling the reader’s attention to God’s piercing gaze as he is able see and know all that we do, and think, and intend to do. That there is nothing we can hide from his sight, and that we are naked and exposed before the one to whom must ultimately give an account.
For many of us I’m sure this is an intimidating picture. I’d venture to guess that for each one of us, there are things in our lives, whether in our actions or our thoughts and intentions, that we’d prefer to keep hidden, to keep out of the light. The Lord confirmed this impulse in my own heart just this past week.
I was working from my office when I decided to go down to the church kitchen to fill my drinking cup with ice water and as I was in the kitchen my stomach began to growl. Now I promise, I don’t usually do this, but, having not brought a lunch with me on that day, I decided to poke my head into the church fridge to see if there might be anything that was fair game in there. What I found was a bunch of food, but all of it was labeled for various ministry uses, so I left it alone.
But, then I moved onto the freezer, where I found one of my favorite treats ~ frozen chocolate chip cookies ~ better yet, cookies that were unlabeled, unclaimed, and therefore, fair game. I joyfully munched down a cookie as I walked back down the hallway and, as I was about to go into the office where Kipp and Michelle and Janice were talking, the thought crossed my mind that, just to be safe, I’d better destroy the evidence of my discovery. So I hastily shoved the last of the cookie into my mouth before walking in.
When I walked into the office, do you know what the first thing Kipp said to me was? He said, “What are you eating?”
And all of a sudden, I wasn’t so sure if those cookies were fair game. My bulging cheek had exposed me and I’d been called to account, and my nervous laughter and sheepish response revealed my discomfort with that scenario.
If that is how a fairly harmless scenario such as this one can leave us feeling, then how does the thought that all our actions, thoughts, and desires are exposed before God make us feel? How does it make you feel?
Who among us can stand before God’s penetrating gaze and say that we are innocent? With such an all knowing God, is there any room for hoping that we, sinners as we are, might not be rejected by the one we claim to follow?
Well, Hebrews 4:14-16 would suggest that, because of who Jesus is, there is great hope for us. And it is to that text that we now turn.
We’ll cover our passage in four points, four points that aim to capture the encouragement offered to us in this passage:
Consider the look of Christ
Assume a posture of confidence
Go to the throne of Grace
Expect to receive God’s help
1. Consider the Look of Christ
As is the pattern in the book of Hebrews, the author transitions in verse 14 from his stark warning to a strong encouragement to consider, once again, Jesus Christ.
In this brief passage ~ I see 5 things the author of Hebrews wants us to consider about Christ.
1. Consider his office
The first thing he calls our attention to is Jesus’ position, for we are told that in Jesus we have a Great High Priest. This is not a new idea in the book of Hebrews, for we have already seen this term applied to Jesus in chapters 2 and 3. But now the author returns to it to deal with it in earnest. It is a rich concept and one that he will explain for the better part of the next 5 chapters! What we need to understand for our passage today, is simply that, under the Old Covenant, the high priest was served as an intermediary between God and His people. But whereas, under the Old Covenant, the High Priest was a man who served for a season and then was replaced, Jesus is our Great High Priest in that he has assumed this office forever. From now on, he is the one and only intermediary between God and man.
2. Consider his position
One of their most important tasks of the high priest, was to go to the temple on the day of atonement where, once every year, they would offer sacrifices for the sins of all the people. And what was unique about this day, was that on this day, the blood of these sacrifices would be taken into the one room in Israel’s temple that was off limits to all people, save the high priest but once a year. This room was called the Most Holy Place, and it stood behind a curtain which separated it from the Holy Place. Within it, was the ark of the covenant, an ornate box, decorated with golden angels. A box that represented God’s presence with his people and a place where God had promised to meet with the priests who came on His people’s behalf. So once a day, the high priest would pass through the curtain, into the Most Holy Place, to seek forgiveness for the sins of the nation. And they would do so year after year, priest after priest, as a ritual meant to keep the nation in right relationship with God. But what is unique about Jesus, what sets him apart from the priests of old, is that Jesus is a high priest who, rather than passing through a curtain, has (as our passage says) passed through the heavens. This is a reference to Jesus’ ascension following his resurrection It reveals that Jesus is better high priest for, rather than passing into a man made room but once a year to minister before the ark of the covenant, Jesus has entered forever into the very throne room of God the Father. This is where Jesus serves as our intermediary, and it is where he will serve his people until He returns.
We see both of these in verse 14. Moving on into verse 15 then, the author invites us to consider three more things about Jesus.
3. Consider his constitution
By constitution – what I mean is that our author wants us to consider what Jesus is made of. Earlier in the book of Hebrews, in 2:17, our author tells us that Jesus “had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” This is the background for what is being said here. It tells us that essential to Jesus being our Great High Priest was his being made like his brothers (and sisters) in every respect. What the author is affirming here is that Jesus was completely and fully human. That though he was fully God, he was also fully man ~ that he did not just appear to be a man or pretend to be like us humans, but rather he truly was human, just as we are, and in becoming human he adopted all that comes with our humanity. And the author assumes this to be true in what he says in verse 15.
4. Consider his experience
Understanding Jesus was fully human, we are called in verse 15 to consider Jesus’s experience while he was on earth. And there are two elements to Jesus’ experience that he wants us to consider. First, he wants to consider Jesus’ experience of human weakness.
Anyone who knows the gospels knows that Jesus’ did not lead a charmed life while he was on earth. His was not a life of luxury, it was not passed in palaces, he was not surrounded by servants who waited on him hand and foot. He was born into poverty and grew up a poor carpenter. He grew up under political oppression, he lost his earthly Father to death, and he had none of the modern conveniences and comforts we live with today.
But even more than experiencing the challenges of human life on earth, our author wants us to see that he experienced the challenges of human life in a fallen world. So we are told that, while on earth, Jesus was tempted in every respect as we are. What does this mean? Not that he was tempted in every single way we are: He wasn’t tempted to cheat on his income taxes. Or to write scathing, hate filled google reviews. Or to access impure Instagram accounts. But he did experience the temptation to sin in all the ways that we ourselves are tempted towards sin. He was tempted towards hatred and murder, greed and gossip, dishonesty and lust.
And yet, the second aspect of Jesus’ experience on earth is that he experienced all of this without ever giving into sin. When he was poor, he never stole. When he was hungry, he never grew irritated and angry with those around him. When his earthly father died, he never ran to sinful comforts or distractions to drown out his grief. When a Roman soldier harassed him along the road for the umpteenth time, he never had a sinful thought or evil intention towards him. Jesus experienced the troubles of this life as every human does and yet he never sinned in the way that he responded to it.
5. Consider his look
What do I mean by “look”? There is a common experience in relationships that involves something often referred to as “The Look.” Kids, know what I’m talking about . . . and I dare say adults do too. It is amazing how much can be communicated between a mother and her child, a wife and her husband, a boss and his employee, a teacher and their classroom ~ with a look. It’s a look that brings a sense of dread to the one who receives it. All joking stops, the warning is received, and a sense of foreboding resides in the air.
The warning passage prior to ours begs the question ~ if we are naked and exposed before our Trinitarian God, then what is the look upon God’s face, upon Jesus’s face, as they gaze down on us from the throne room?
What our passage is driving us to consider, is that because of Jesus’ humanity and because of his experience on this earth, we can rest assured that when Jesus looks at us in all our human frailty and sin, when he discerns our thoughts and our intentions – his look is one of sympathetic compassion. For Jesus understands what it is like to be you. He has felt the pull of temptation in a multitude of human situations. And lest we think that his lack of sin lessens his similarity to us. It would be good for us to consider how temptation grows the longer we resist it. So in never sinning, Jesus experienced more, not less, of our own human weakness. He felt temptation to a degree that we’ve never felt it, because we gave into it, where he did not.
With this knowledge Jesus doesn’t just understand us, he is also affectionate towards us. As John Owen writes on this passage: “During our trials he has a real movement of affection in his holy nature . . .” (Owen, 106). And “He is inwardly moved during our sufferings and trials with a sense of empathy” (Owen, 107). Or as Dane Ortlund observes, “In our pain, Jesus is pained . . . his heart is feelingly drawn into our distress. His human nature engages our troubles comprehensively. [For] His is a love that cannot be held back when he sees his people in pain” (Ortlund, 46).
We tend to think that Jesus is near to us and on our side and present and helping us when we are doing well in life, when we are strong, and when we feel like we’re walking in righteousness. And then we feel like Jesus is upset with us and against us and disappointed with us when we are not doing well, when we are weak, when we struggle to get out of bed, when we are sad or at a loss of what were supposed to do in life, and when we’re caught up in a battle with sin. What this passage is telling us is that it is precisely when we feel at our most weak and vulnerable that Jesus looks down at us from heaven with a look of sympathy. It’s the look of one who understands, it’s the look of one who feels for you, and it’s the look of one who wants to help you to do what only he has been able to do ~ to overcome sin, and remain faithful to God.
And so, it is with this picture of Christ before us, that the author of Hebrews now tells us how we ought to respond.
2. Assume a Posture of Confidence
Verse 16 begins with the words, “Let us then with confidence . . .” With those five words, the author of Hebrews commends to us a posture which, apart from Christ, makes no sense when we consider sinful humans and how they ought to relate to a holy God, especially a holy God who sees and knows all their sinful deeds, actions, and intentions. But because of Christ has become one of us, and because of Christ’s compassionate disposition towards us, we are told that we can be confident as we come to him.
Friends, is this your posture in your relationship with God? Are you confident that, no matter who you are or what you’ve done, that you can always approach Him, always speak to Him, and He will never turn you away? Or do you relate to God as if he is perpetually angry with you and ashamed of you? Are you afraid of him or uncertain of how you might be received by Him? Or have you come to believe that only the most holy among us are allowed to approach God in that way? Only those who have done all the right things or practiced the right rituals?
That is not to say that we don’t serve an awesome God, one who is terrible in his wrath, and one who is not to be trifled with. But it is to say that if we approach God through Christ, if we’ve believed in Jesus and followed Him, then we ought to approach God with confidence, not on the basis of who we are, but on the basis of who Jesus is.
That is our first response to having a sympathetic high priest, the second is that, in our confidence, we ought to . . .
3. Draw Near to the Throne of Grace
This is the action our confidence is to produce. The author of Hebrews isn’t speaking of confidence in general, but rather confidence to approach God’s throne.
In telling us to draw near to His throne the benefits of the new covenant are being laid out before the believer. For under the old covenant, recall that it was only the High Priest who drew near to God’s presence in the Most Holy Place, and that only once a year. But now, anyone who is a follower of Christ is being told they (you!) can to draw near to God yourself. This is why Jesus is such a great high priest, he is not just an intermediary who represents us before God on one day out of the year, he is one who has gained access for us to God himself for all of time. And the tense of this verb, “Draw near”, indicates that we are being told to take advantage of this access by draying near to God continually. In other words, Christ’s victory over sin and compassionate disposition towards sinners invites us to draw near to God’s throne over and over and over. Through Christ, our access to God is unlimited! Can you imagine what that must have meant to this group of believers who were feeling tempted to return to their roots of Judaism? For those who desired to return to life under the Old Covenant?
I wonder what it means to each of us this morning. When was the last time you drew near to God? How you taking advantage of the access Jesus has given you to His throne? Do you even know how you would go about it?
One of my heroes in the faith was and is Timothy Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. He was a great preacher and author and apologist who transformed New York City through his ministry, and who taught me so much as I listened to and read his works. As Tim was dying from pancreatic cancer, he was in an interview when the interviewer said: “Looking back over your nearly 50 years in Christian ministry, what’s something you regret? What’s something you wish you had done differently?” And without any hesitation Tim said, “Oh, that’s easy. I wish I’d prayed more.” His is one regret was that he didn’t spend more of his time drawing near to God in prayer.
Now I don’t know exactly why Tim answered the way he did ~ but I do know this, that his answer has helped to rightly order my own life and it can help you rightly order yours. Because it reminds us that there is nothing so important in this life as accepting the invitation found in Christ’s compassionate disposition to us. There is nothing so important in this life than drawing near to God through Jesus Christ. And because of who Jesus is, we’re told here that we can do so with confidence. Confidence that when we come to God’s throne in Christ, what we will find is a “throne of grace.” What we will find is One who is seated on the throne, the King of the Universe, the One who has all the authority and power in the cosmos, and his disposition towards us will be to give those who come in Christ, grace ~ undeserved, unearned kindness ~ over and over and over ~ not because of who you are, but because of who Christ is on your behalf.
So how do we do it? How do we draw near to God’s throne?
For those who do not yet have a relationship with God, you do so by accepting Jesus’ invitation for the first time – the invitation to “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” We accept this invitation by going to God in prayer and repenting of our sin and putting our faith in Jesus as the sole means of our hope for salvation. If you have done this, then what is written in 1 John will be true of you: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” If you’re here this morning and have not done this, know that this is your only hope of being in a right relationship with God.
For those who are in Christ, for those who know that life in Christ is not easy, but is an ongoing battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil ~ we must make a regular habit of drawing near to God. And we do so primarily through prayer and through worship. Such is our access to God in Christ that we can do so in the quietness of our bedroom or on the train to the city, we can do so at all hours of the day or night, we can do so whether we feel worthy or not. And while there is great benefit to learning to do this in your individual relationship with God, it should be noted that throughout the book of Hebrews, we are continually being encouraged to pursue right relationship with God in community. So in addition to drawing near to God alone, we must see that this action is something we are meant to do together. In the Christian community, it’s never just “me and God” but it is always “God and us,” “God and the community He is creating.” So we must also learn to draw near to God with others ~ which is why, if you’re part of Grace Church, we’d encourage you once again to prioritize being here for our weekly corporate worship service and to consider attending our Wednesday night prayer meeting.
Now as we complete verse 16, we complete the thought our author is communicating which reveals the reason for why we are told to draw near with confidence to the throne of grace . . . and that reason is: “. . . that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
4. Expect to Receive God’s Help
What this passage is ultimately inviting us to do, is to draw near to God, with confidence, for the sake of seeking His help.
And the promise contained within our passage is that, for those who confidently draw near to God’s throne with their needs, they will receive the mercy and grace for that need. And they will receive it in a timely fashion ~ for that is the meaning of the final few words: That we will find grace for timely aid, or when help is needed.
Now surely there are many areas of weakness where we need help, but I believe that the primary weakness the author of Hebrews has in mind here is our struggle with sin: The particular temptation to sin the community of Hebrews was struggling with was the sin of apostasy ~ or the sin of turning away from God in light of the hardness of life. And this was a temptation that Jesus knew intimately. For in the Garden of Gethsemane, we see Jesus come face to face with the hardness of life ~ namely, his own approaching arrest, trial, beatings, and crucifixion. And it’s in the face of this hardship, that we see Jesus in all of his humanity. For he asks the Father that if there might be any other way, that he might provide it. And having concluded that this is the Father’s will, we see him sweat great drops of blood, an indication of one under extreme stress born out of the temptation to run from God in the midst of his suffering. And it was a temptation that Jesus ultimately overcame ~ for he chose obedience to God over self-preservation. Or as we will read in Hebrew 5:8 “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”
Now, in some sense, much of our weakness in this life is also tied to the temptation towards apostasy ~ the temptation to turn and run from God when life gets hard sin. As George Guthrie observes[1] in his commentary on Hebrews, there is a downward gravitational pull in this life, especially when life is hard. A pull towards the temptations of the world, the temptations of our flesh, and the temptations of the devil. It is a pull towards sin, that makes movement towards God in those moments feel like the most unnatural action in the world. Such that, when life gets hard, we find it far more natural to run away from God than to draw near to him. So we leave the church or we tune out the sermon and we pick up the bottle or our phones, and we return to old, sinful patterns of life rather than going to God in prayer and worship.
This proclivity is why Hebrews is filled with warning passages, for if we continue in these paths, we will fall away from God, and we will prove that we never truly followed him.
But in Christ, what we have is one who is one who has experienced that downward gravitational pull, one who knows the temptation to run from God in disobedience when life gets hard, one who has tasted the bitterness of that cup and drank it down its dregs and defeated it. In Christ ~ to borrow an analogy from Dane Ortlund[2] ~ we do not just have a doctor who is distantly prescribing us medicine for our troubles, but we have one who has endured the very same disease we suffer from in this life, who has entered into our weakness and suffered alongside us. And we have a doctor who has beat it and now offers us his help.
And it is he who now, with all the tenderness of one who knows what it is like to be us, to be human, calls us to draw near to God, so that we might find the help we need, and it is in Him that we are assured that if we will but come, we will receive God’s mercy and grace to help us in our time of need.
Now, I want to address what may be a thought in some of your minds ~ and it is this ~ “I’ve tried that, but it doesn’t work. I’ve gone to God amid my weakness and temptation, I’ve asked him for help, and yet the temptation didn’t go away, the struggle was still there, life was still hard.”
Here is what I would have you do: Look once again to Jesus, look at him in Gethsemane, when the temptation to sin was likely at its strongest, look at how he earnestly and confidently drew near to God in prayer and consider how much the Father had him endure while, at the same time, He was answering Jesus’s prayers. For in the end, Jesus’ dark night in Gethsemane yielded a Savior who was willing to endure his sacrifice for our salvation. It was precisely because Jesus’s desire to obey God overcame, with God’s merciful help, his desire to run away from God in disobedience.
If that is what “help” from God looked like for Christ, then I do think we should expect something similar in our own lives: When we ask for help, we ought not expect all temptation to cease. When we ask for help, we ought not expect that life will all of a sudden become easy. When we ask for help, we ought to expect that we, like Jesus, will learn obedience to God through suffering, through persevering in the belief that obedience to God is far better than running from him and into sin. And as we go ~ often, continually ~ to God for help, we will find is that over time, we have become more like Christ and that we have God to thank for it.
Conclusion
On a past mission trip to Slovenia, I heard a story told by the pastor of a small church in the city of Maribor named Andres. He told the story of his youth, and how he was a particularly disobedient child, but with a particularly godly Christian father. And he told the story of how, on one particular occasion, he went to look at his Father’s aquarium, an aquarium he had been told not to touch when his Father was not around. And in disobedience to his Father, he put a chair next to the aquarium to better see its contents, and as he climbed up on the chair, he grabbed hold of the aquarium to pull himself up. And in doing so, he pulled the whole thing down, smashing the glass, spilling the water, and effectively killing the fish inside.
His response to his disobedience, was to turn and run. He ran out of the house and into the neighborhood where he found somewhere to hide and he stayed out there for a very long time, so long that his parents had time to contact all the neighbors as well as the police, all of whom joined in the search for this boy until he was eventually found. And when he was found, when he finally came face to face with his father, a father who deeply loved his son, do you know what his father said to him? He said, “Andres, I want you to promise me something, the next time you do something wrong, the next time you mess up and sin, I want you to run to me, and not away from me.”
My friends, that is what we’re being called to do today. No matter how long it has been. No matter how far you have strayed. No matter how deep your sin. Know that Jesus is looking at you with sympathy and compassion and that he is calling you, on the basis of his perfect life, to draw near to God in your fight with sin, for it is there and only there that you will find the help you need to overcome it.
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Works Consulted
Bruce, F.F. The Epistle to the Hebrews (NICNT). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, 1990.
Ellingworth, Paul. The Epistle to the Hebrews (NIGTC). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, 1993.
Guthrie, George H. The NIV Application Commentary: Hebrews. Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 1998.
Kell, J. Garrett. Pure in Heart: Sexual Sin and the Promises of God. Crossway: Wheaton, 2021.
McGrath, Alister & J.I. Packer (Eds). The Crossway Classic Commentaries: Hebrews by John Owen. Crossway Publishers: Wheaton, 1998.
Ortlund, Dane. Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers. Crossway: Wheaton, 2020.
[1] Guthrie, 183.
[2] An analogy from Ortlund, 47.
NEXT SUNDAY: Luke 1:5–17, To Make Ready for the Lord a People Prepared