Week #4 - We Can Draw Near
Blog Series Intention Recap
Think of the last time you needed help and hesitated before asking for it. Maybe it was a struggle with money, a recurring temptation you couldn't seem to shake, a season of depression, or simply a mistake you were embarrassed to admit. Before you said a word, some quiet calculation ran in the background: Will this person actually understand what I'm facing, or will they just judge me?
Our confidence before God rests on Yeshua (Jesus)—His person, His completed sacrifice, and His continuing priestly ministry. Because our great High Priest faithfully represents us, we can draw near with confidence and hold firmly to our hope. This series should help readers understand Messiah’s present ministry and how it gives believers confidence to approach God. We turn to His work as our High Priest: He understands our weakness, has offered the sufficient sacrifice for sin, lives to intercede for us, and opens the way into God’s presence. Join us as we explore what Yeshua is doing now.
This page is a post in the series “Our Great High Priest: What Is Yeshua Doing Now.” Click here to see the rest of the posts.
Let’s jump into Week #4:
Messiah's sacrifice and priesthood give believers confidence to approach God, persevere in hope, and encourage one another.
Knowledge and practice don't automatically align. You can believe every true thing about Yeshua's priesthood — His sympathy, His finished sacrifice, His living intercession — and still hold God at arm's length out of old habit, old shame, or simple inattention. Hebrews knows this. At this point in the letter, the writer gathers his teaching about Messiah's sacrifice and priesthood into three direct calls to respond.
This matters because doctrine that never reaches our habits of prayer, hope, and community isn't yet doing its full work. Hebrews 10:19–25 is where the theology of this series becomes an invitation—three invitations, actually—for ordinary Thursday-to-Thursday life.
Why it Matters:
Knowing what Yeshua has done does not automatically change how we live. We can affirm His sufficient sacrifice and continuing intercession while still hesitating to pray, struggling to persevere, or withdrawing from other believers. Hebrews 10 calls us to respond to our great High Priest:
We can draw near to God with confidence because Yeshua has opened the way.
We can hold firmly to our hope because the One who promised is faithful.
We can strengthen one another through encouragement, fellowship, love, and good works.
These invitations bring the whole series into everyday life. Our High Priest’s ministry shapes how we approach God, endure difficulty, and care for the people around us.
Go Deeper:
Primary text: Hebrews 10:19–25 · Supporting text: Hebrews 4:14–16
Three weeks ago, we opened this series with a hesitation, performing the quiet calculation that runs through our minds before we ask someone for help: Will this person actually understand what I'm carrying? We asked whether Yeshua (Jesus), holy and exalted, could really understand people like us.
We now know the answer. He understands our weakness, having faced real temptation without sin. His sacrifice for our guilt is finished, not one more installment in an endless debt. He lives forever to intercede for us, representing us continually before the Father, an advocate for us even in our failures. So here's the question that remains, the one all of that was building toward: what keeps us standing at a distance anyway?
Hebrews 10:19–21 lays two foundations before issuing any command. Verse 19: "since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus." Verse 21: "and since we have a great priest over the house of God." Only then does the passage move to three direct exhortations: draw near, hold fast, and consider one another (vv. 22–25). All three are addressed to the believing community from the start; they are not private acts that only later become communal. Week 2 traced the sufficiency of that sacrifice. Week 3 traced the permanence of that priesthood. Hebrews 10 shows us how a community responds to both.
Let Us Draw Near
Hebrews 10:19–20 lays the first foundation: "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh." Through His sacrificial death, Yeshua opened the way into God's presence. Hebrews describes access through the imagery of the sanctuary curtain — the barrier that, under the old covenant, separated the Most Holy Place from everyone but the high priest, who entered on the annual Day of Atonement. That restriction governed entry into the sanctuary itself; it did not mean ordinary Israelites had no way to seek God in prayer. The high priest entered the Most Holy Place on behalf of the people, as God instructed. Hebrews uses that restricted access to help us appreciate the access to God that Messiah now provides.
Our confidence rests on both His sacrifice and His continuing priesthood. Through Him, God's people can draw near.
So Hebrews 10:22 issues the invitation: "let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water." The sprinkled heart and washed body echo the cleansing rites given to Israel's priests before they served in the sanctuary — outward and inward purification pictured together. Interpreters differ on exactly what the washing refers to, but Hebrews' point doesn't depend on settling that question. The cleansing language reinforces our confidence: through Messiah, we are prepared to approach the holy God.
Our access rests on Yeshua. We respond with sincere faith, bringing our needs honestly and confessing the sin we need to turn from — not performing a worthiness we don't have, but trusting the worthiness He has already provided.
Let Us Hold Fast
The second invitation shifts from approach to endurance: "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful" (10:23). The hope we confess rests in Messiah and looks toward the fulfillment of God's promises. His sufficient sacrifice and continuing priesthood give us reason to persevere while we wait.
Hebrews' original readers were tempted to let that confession slip quietly, worn down by suffering, delay, and disappointment. God's faithfulness gives us reason to keep holding firmly to our confession, even when doing so is costly. The ground of our perseverance isn't our own steadiness — we grow tired, discouraged, and forgetful — but the faithfulness of the One who made the promise. That's what makes holding fast possible even when circumstances remain difficult.
Let Us Consider One Another
The third invitation is the one we're often tempted to treat as optional, as if faith were a private transaction between an individual and God. Hebrews won't allow that; as we've seen, all three invitations were addressed to the believing community from the outset. "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near" (10:24–25). The approaching Day gives this encouragement urgency: our life together looks toward Messiah's coming and our accountability before Him.
Notice the word "consider" — it implies more than passive goodwill. It's active attention: actually thinking about the specific people around you and what they need in order to keep believing and keep obeying. Some in Hebrews' original audience had apparently begun skipping the gathering altogether, perhaps out of discouragement or fear of association with a suffering community. Hebrews treats that pattern of withdrawal as a real danger, not a neutral preference — our hold on hope is rarely sustained in isolation.
This isn't a word against those who cannot attend because of illness, distance, or other limitations beyond their control. It's a word against drifting away by choice. We were given a High Priest who represents us as a people, not merely as scattered individuals, and the ordinary means He uses to keep us near Him often runs through someone else's encouragement — whether at your side or checking in on you from a distance.
How does this help me understand the concept of “Our Great High Priest: What Is Yeshua Doing Now?”
A Question Readers May Ask
Does "approaching God with confidence" mean I can expect Him to give me whatever I ask for, since Yeshua has already opened the way?
This is worth addressing directly, because "confidence" can easily slide into entitlement if we're not careful. Confidence before God includes reverence. The access Hebrews describes is real and full, but it's access into the presence of a holy God, not a casual transaction with a vending machine. Hebrews 4:16 calls us to approach "the throne of grace" — still a throne, still deserving of honor, even as it's also a place of mercy and help.
Access is a gift secured by Messiah, never a claim that God owes us our preferred circumstances. The confidence Hebrews describes is confidence that we'll be heard, that we're welcome, that mercy and grace are genuinely available to us in our time of need — not a guarantee that every request will be answered exactly as we'd like. Drawing near with confidence and drawing near with reverent trust in God's wisdom aren't in tension; Hebrews holds them together in the same breath.
Our Response
Begin with one concrete step today, while letting all three invitations shape your life this week.
Draw near: Bring a neglected concern to God — something you've stopped praying about because you assumed it wasn't worth mentioning again.
Hold fast: Identify a pressure that is weakening your confidence in Messiah's promises.
Encourage someone: Offer a specific word or practical help to a believer who is wearing down, whether they're sitting near you or unable to gather with you at all right now.
Over these four weeks we've traced one connected argument from Hebrews: Yeshua understands our weakness, tested in every way as we are, yet without sin. His sacrifice is sufficient, offered once for all, requiring no repetition and no supplement. He lives to intercede, permanently, faithfully, on the basis of a finished work. And therefore, we can draw near — with confidence, with enduring hope, and with each other.
That whole argument runs through the sanctuary and priesthood God gave Israel long before Hebrews was written — the curtain, the cleansing, the Day of Atonement, the priest who represented the people before Him. Hebrews doesn't set that history aside; it shows us what it was pointing to all along. March explored Messiah's coming Kingdom. This month has explored His present ministry as our great High Priest and the confidence it gives us today.
None of this was ever meant to end as information you now possess. It was meant to end as an invitation you actually take. Whatever distance you've kept, whatever hesitation still lingers from the question we opened with three weeks ago — the way is open, the Priest is faithful, and the throne of grace is exactly where you're welcome. Approach God on that basis today.
