There's a famous picture of President Kennedy sitting in the Oval Office, the most powerful

man in the world, ordinarily inaccessible to the average person on the street.

And yet, there they are, two small children, a boy and a girl right in front of his desk.

And the president isn't chewing them away.

He's smiling at them, clapping as they happily dance on the carpet in front of him, because

of course, these are his children.

What people wouldn't give for that kind of access to the world's most powerful person?

What if we had that kind of access to God?

The word priest is used throughout the Old Testament to describe a person who enters God's

presence on behalf of the people of God.

They were mediators, go-betweens.

Essentially, performed two roles on behalf of God's people.

They interceded for them, meaning they spoke to God on behalf of God's people.

And they made sacrifices for them to deal with their sin.

As we saw in another episode of Simply Put, the one about the offices of Christ, Jesus Christ

is also a priest, but he's described in the New Testament as the great high priest.

That's because he too combines those two priestly roles of interceding and sacrificing,

but in an infinitely greater way than any Old Testament priest ever did.

Romans chapter 8 says that Christ now sits at God's right hand, interceding for God's

people, which is something that could never be said of any previous priest, and he can

do this because he has offered the ultimate sacrifice.

In fact, it's not merely that he offers a sacrifice on behalf of his people.

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