I am delighted to address you this morning in
the words of the writer to the Hebrews, “Holy
brothers and sisters, you who share in a heavenly calling…” (3:1)
Our text is at once a new slant and yet a continuation of that which the writer to the Hebrews is seeking to communicate to his readers. You will remember that this letter is written to a group of Hebrew Christians who somehow had lost perspective of their great salvation in Christ over time.
They were tempted to substitute the Christ of their salvation, whose Being and Nature is described in 1:3.
They were tempted to return to Judaism, and in so doing, they were beginning to drift away (2:1).
This is a very serious matter and when we get to chapter 6:4-6 we will see that this has very serious consequences:
4 For
it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have
tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted
the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then
have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are
crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to
contempt.
Drifting from Jesus is a slow process. It happens incrementally, and finally people that once believed in Jesus give up on Him, and they give up meeting with the people of Jesus, a matter addressed in 10:24,25 -
“23 Let
us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised
is faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good
works, 25 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.”
This is utterly relevant to our own day. This Covid season has exposed our hearts like little else since the end of WW2, after which huge sociological changes came upon our world and the church.[1] I spoke to a pastor in our Sola 5 connexion this past week and he tells me that 50 percent of their membership has not returned to regular worship, and Covid has apparently provided a respectable reason. In our congregation thankfully we do not have such a high percentage, but we do have members whose love for Jesus and the church has cooled. Huge events like this have that sort of effect, and since the Christian faith and the church form a familiar routine for many that are not thoroughly connected to Christ, they drift away, and they discover that they are not really missing Christ and His body. They then search for renewed meaning and in that process (and with Satan’s help fueling the natural desires of the flesh) the soul substitutes its contentment in God and in Christ for lesser beings and things and activities.[2] Our fallen religious instinct (and yes, we are all religious – but perverted by original sin) drives us to lesser beings.
And so we have seen in Chapter 1:
4-2:18 that these Hebrews were moving away from Jesus by beginning to consider the angels - these
marvelous and mysterious heavenly beings - as superior to Jesus.
Hebrews 2:1-6
But in addition to that, we shall now see, they
were thinking that Moses, that huge Old Testament figure was superior to Jesus.
Again this apostolic writer labors to show them that they were heading into
treacherous waters, and so he strongly exhorts them to take another good look
at Jesus.
Now Moses’ importance to the Jewish mind cannot be overstated. Moses was revered as the greatest of all Hebrews. His history and his legacy in the Bible is huge. He was chosen by God in the unique encounter of the burning bush (Ex. 3). He was the great deliverer of his people when he led them out of Egypt (Ex. 7-12). He was the great intercessor of his people when they sinned (e.g. Ex. 17:4, 8-13; 32:11-14, 31-32). He received the 10 commandments on Mt.Sinai, and from him came the law of Moses. (Ex. 34:29-35); He was Israel’s greatest prophet (Deut. 34:10,11). He was second only to Adam in his experience of intimacy with God[3]. Numbers 12:6-8 reveals this concerning Moses:
6 …"Hear my words: If there
is a prophet among you, I the LORD make myself known to him in a vision; I
speak with him in a dream. 7 Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in
all my house. 8 With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles,
and he beholds the form of the LORD.“
The first 5 books of the Bible, the so called
Pentateuch, are attributed to Moses. Moses was the meekest and humblest person on
the face of the earth (Num. 12:3).
His character was undoubtedly forged in the desert during those 40 years. And now you will understand the high regard
which the Hebrew people had for Moses. He seemed, like the angels to be
superhuman, and now we can understand why the writer finds it necessary to
establish the superiority of Christ over Moses. The danger of drifting back into
Judaism is real. Drifting into the past
and into lesser loves and 'the good old days' and sentimentalism is a real
temptation for all of us when Jesus shifts out of sight.
1. A CALL TO FOCUS ON JESUS! (3:1)
It is with this thought in mind that the writer calls them to consider Jesus:
1 Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession...,
Please take note that his appeal is to their
confession of faith: they are brothers,
they are holy, they share in a heavenly
calling. This is what they professed, but now the writer holds them accountable to their commitment to Jesus, their apostle[4] and high priest. By these titles Jesus
superiority to Moses is asserted.
The word apostle means ‘sent one’, and we must remember that Jesus repeatedly refers to Himself as One sent by the Father into the world[5]. In that sense Jesus occupies the foundation of all apostolic work. As high priest He fulfills the office perfectly as mediator between man and God, because He is both, the Son of Man and the Son of God. As such then they and we are called to consider[6] Jesus. The word is intense and calls us to examine Jesus closely. The apostle Paul expresses this intense desire to know Jesus in Philippians 3:10,
“… that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
In Hebrews 12:1,2 we have another call to look closely at Jesus,
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us
run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame,
and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
This writer understands that the survival of these people to whom he
is writing depends on a close, intimate look
on this Jesus, both as the
apostle sent from God and
as high priest standing between them and God. Oh, how we
need to cultivate intense look at Jesus through our private Bible reading, in regular
prayer and meditation, and through hearing the Word of Jesus preached to us
often. Consider Him! (cf. also 12:3). Take a thorough, clear and close
look at Jesus, and you will see the immense difference between Him and other great personalities and beings, whose
lesser glories we so easily fall for. The antidote to every spiritual illness is a
better sight of Christ. Get to know Jesus as He is presented to you in the
Bible. Then you will never leave him.
2. A CALL TO OBSERVE THAT JESUS IS GREATER THAN MOSES (3:2-6)
And now the writer helps them and us to see
just in which way Jesus is greater than Moses,
2 Jesus…who was faithful to him who appointed
him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house. 3 For Jesus has been
counted worthy of more glory than Moses--as much more glory as the builder of a
house has more honor than the house itself. 4 (For every house is built by
someone, but the builder of all things is God.) 5 Now Moses was faithful in all
God's house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be
spoken later, 6 but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. And we
are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our
hope.
While both Jesus and Moses were faithful in
their God given callings, Jesus calling was greater because His work was
greater. By way of an illustration the
writer uses the analogy of a house and its builder. An architect, a builder is always greater
than the building which he designs and builds. So the point is that Jesus is
superior to Moses because Jesus is the builder, and Moses is part of the building
or household as a steward and servant. Now we need to remember that this
comparison does not minimize or devalue Moses. His faithfulness is not in
question. We know that he was highly
honoured by the Jews and in history. The fact however is that Jesus
build the true house, the temple of God,
the church, just as He build the
universe (1:2). Moses served as a
great leader in the house of God, but Jesus by
His shed blood and broken body built
the living temple of God. Moses
upheld the sacrificial system. Jesus Himself was the ultimate sacrifice.
Verse 5 makes this great distinction between Jesus and Moses even more clear:
“Now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant… but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son.”
The word used to describe Moses
servanthood is rare and only used here in the NT. It is the word “therapōn”, (from which we derive the word therapy
or therapist) denoting an honoured servant who is far above a slave, but who is still a servant. Moses was truly a servant of
the LORD (Ex. 14:31; Num. 11:11;12:7;
Deut. 3:24; Josh. 1:2). In Exodus 35-50 alone there are 22 references to
Moses’s faithfulness to God.
In fact, Moses was a faithful servant and witness to Christ. We are told that he was to “to testify to the things that were to be spoken later.” Moses, therefore in this sense is another John the Baptist (who was not the light- John 1: 6-8), but simply pointing and testifying to the greater One to come. In fact, Moses law, and the entire sacrificial system, the ceremonies, the priesthood, the tabernacle were all pointing to their fulfilment in the coming Christ. That is why Jesus said to the Jews,
“For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.”(Jn. 5:46).
And after the resurrection, walking with 2 disciples on the Emmaus road we read this:
27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Lk 24:27).
Moses was a faithful servant, and in one sense he was a
son of God, but He was not the eternal Son. Christ is the faithful son over the house of God (3:6). Moses pointed to Him, but Jesus fulfilled all
the OT prophecies even unto the cross. Such was the ministry of our faithful
apostle and high priest, the One sent from God to redeem us from our sin. Jesus is greater and better than Moses.
Infinitely!
Does our faithful apostle and high priest require anything from us?
Yes He does!
1. We have already seen that we must intensely consider Him – the Son of God. And now two more things: “And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”
2. We are His house, in being and doing. We are the living temple of God – not Moses’s tabernacle, nor David’s temple – these all pointed to the living church . As such we need to identify with His house, remembering that it is He that calls us and gathers us into this living community. To be disregard the church means to disregard Christ.
3. In this we must persevere: “we must hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.” We will find this condition again and again in the book of Hebrews: we need to persevere in the Christian life. We must hold on. We must hold on in the context of His house. It is the test of a true faith. The doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints is not only rooted in the fact that God has saved us decisively, but that this fact must be seen and worked out in our lives within the house that Jesus has built .
Are you persevering? Or are you
drifting from Christ and His house?
Is Jesus as dear to you as on the
first day when you met Him?
Are you holding fast to your
confidence and boasting in your hope in Christ?
[1] My dear father left Germany as a
thoroughly disillusioned and god-less man. (Thankfully he did not die that way!) The war and Adolf Hitler had killed
the soul of the German nation. Hitler was greatly influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), a German
philosopher and writer whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern
intellectual history. Nietzsche said famously, ‘God is dead‘. Nietzsche believed there could be positive
new possibilities for humans without God. Relinquishing
the belief in God opens the way for human creative abilities to fully develop.
The Christian God, he wrote, would no longer stand in the way, so human
beings might stop turning their eyes toward a supernatural realm and begin to
acknowledge the value of this world. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead]
[2]
Since Satan cannot destroy the gospel he has
too often neutralised its usefulness
by addition, subtraction or substitution (J.C. Ryle)
[3] R.Kent Hughes: Hebrews Vol 1, p.90
[4]
The term apostle for Jesus is only used
once, here ; the term high priest is
used 12x in Hebrews
[5] Over 10 times in John’s writings
[6] Katanoeō ( also 10:24) – to perceive clearly, to understand fully, to consider closely
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