3. The priests under the law were not to be hard-hearted, but pitiful and compassionate, willing and ready, with an abundance of bowels, to offer for the people, and to make an atonement for them (Heb 5:1,2). To signify that Jesus Christ should be a tender-hearted High Priest, able and willing to sympathize and be affected with the infirmities of others, to pray for them, to offer up for them His precious blood; He must be such a One who can have compassion on a company of poor ignorant souls, and on them that are out of the way, to recover them, and to set them in safety (Heb 4:15). And that He might thus do, He must be a man that had experience of the disadvantages that infirmity and sin did bring unto those poor creatures (Heb 2:17).
4. The high priests under the law were not to be shy or squeamish in case any had the plague or leprosy, scab, or blotches. Still, they must look on them, go to them, and offer for them (Lev 13), all of which is to signify that Jesus Christ should not refuse to take notice of the several infirmities of the poorest people but to teach them, and to see that none of them be lost because of has us their infirmity, for want of looking to or tending of.
This privilege also have we under this second covenant. This is the way to make grace shine.
5. The high priests under the law were to be anointed with very excellent oil, compounded by art (Exo 29:7; 30:30). To signify, that Jesus, the Great High Priest of this new covenant, would be in a most eminent way anointed to His priestly office by the Holy Spirit of the Lord.
6. The priest's food and livelihood in the time of his ministry was to be the consecrated and holy things (Exo 29:33). To signify that it is the very meat and drink of Jesus Christ to do His priestly office and to save and preserve His poor, tempted, and afflicted saints. O, what a new-covenant High Priest have we!
7. The priests under the law were to be washed with water (Exo 29:4). To signify that Jesus Christ should not go about the work of His priestly office with the filth of sin upon Him but was without sin to appear as our High Priest in the presence of His Father, to execute His priestly office there for our advantage—"For such a high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens" (Heb 7:26).
8. The high priest under the law, before they went into the holy place, was to be clothed—with a curious garment, a breastplate, an ephod, a robe, an embroidered coat, a miter, and a girdle, and they were to be made of gold, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen. There must be precious stones in his garment and glorious ornaments, and on those stones, the names of the children of Israel (read Exodus 28). All this was to signify what a glorious High Priest Jesus Christ should be, and how in the righteousness of God He should appear before God as our High Priest, to offer up the sacrifice that was to be offered for our salvation to God His Father. But I pass that.
Second, Now I shall speak to His office. The office of the high priest, in general, was twofold. 1. To offer the sacrifice without the camp. 2. To bring it within the veil—that is, into the holiest of all, which did type out Heaven.
1. [First part of the high priest's office]. (1.) It was the priest's office to offer the sacrifice, and so did Jesus Christ; He did offer His own Body and Soul in sacrifice. I say, HE did OFFER it, and not another, as it is written, "No man taketh away My life, but I lay it down of Myself; I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it again" (John 10:17,18). And again, it is said, "When He," Jesus, "had offered up one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down on the right hand of God" (Heb 10:12). (2.) The priests under the law must offer up the sacrifice that God had appointed, and none else, a complete one without any blemish; and so did our High Priest, where He saith, "Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body has Thou prepared Me," and that I will offer (Heb 10:5). (3.) The priest was to take of the ashes of the sacrifice sepulcher and lay them in a clean place; and this signifies sacrifice sepulcher that the Body of Jesus, after it had been offered, should be laid into Joseph's sepulchre, as in a clean place, where never any man before was laid (Lev 6:11, compared with John 19:41,42).
