Jesus Understands

Hebrews 4:15-16

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Have you ever felt as though nobody understands what you were going through? Maybe you’re a teenager and you’re thinking about your parents and well, its been so many years since they were kids since they were in my shoes. And they don’t understand the peer pressure, the anxieties and the challenges that I have to face going through school, going through work and all that.

Maybe you’re going through a situation that is so unique or seems so unique to yourself that not even your best friend could understand you. And it’s easy to think about our parents and our friends, teachers, pastors, bosses in that light. And it’s also very easy to think about God there, too, because well I mean, he’s so big, he’s so distant, he’s so far away, it seems. And he deals with billions of people. He has a very strong standard of what is right and what is wrong, that he can never understand everything that I am going through.

But one of the neat things about our text today in Hebrews Chapter four is that it dispels that notion. It says, there, talking about Jesus,

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. (Hebrews 4:15)

So what that tells you and me is that when Jesus came to Earth, when he took on flesh, when he became fully human. He came here to redeem us from our sins. But he also came here to experience the full gamut of the human experience. He knew what it was like to grieve the loss of a friend when Lazarus passed away. And he wept bitterly. He knew what it’s like to be disappointed by his disciples who seem to fail and never understand it every step of the way. He knew what it’s like to be exhausted and tired when people came to him for miracle after miracle, and he just wanted to get away for some alone time. And he knew what it’s like to be betrayed and abandoned by his friends when they all disappeared when he was arrested in the garden Gesthemane.

Jesus fully understands what you are going through. That’s one of the great gifts that he gave us when he became human. And so he stands between us and God as our high priest. And then he also gives us a promise to in verse and says, there,

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)

And so we have a high priest who is fully able to sympathizes, who fully understands everything that we are going through. And so he’s not too big. He’s not too distant. Rather, he tells us, Come, come with your burdens, come with your anxieties, come with your your worries and your concerns, and lay them there at my feet because I fully understand them. And then on top of that, he promises that he will give you grace and mercy in response.

This is a wonderful comfort for us whenever we see that God is too far away from us. He is right there and he fully understands what you and I are going through. Amen.