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HOLY HELP FOR THE HOPELESSCOMES FROM THE MOST TRUSTWORTHY PERSON IN THE UNIVERSEHebrews 3:1-6 INTRODUCTION We live in a culture overrun with saviors offering a huge variety of salvations. The marketplace is cluttered with competing claims from almost innumerable spokespersons offering us sure and certain ways to attain life long happiness. Though some of the proffered salvations have to do with what happens after you die, the vast majority promise a good life here and now. Whether it is E.F. Hutton offering you a luxurious retirement if you trust them with your money or Schick promising you that beautiful women will fight in order to be the first to touch your smooth cheeks if you’ll use their razor or Benny Hinn guaranteeing perfect health if you’ll believe in Jesus or your local politician pledging lower taxes if you vote for her; our consumer culture is awash in the claims and counterclaims of competing saviors and their salvations. We are susceptible to the seductive call of these competitors because we are consummate consumers, always looking for a better deal, a more exciting salvation. We are perpetually dissatisfied with our current situation and always on the lookout for a guaranteed way to improve upon our condition. A recent commercial I’ve noticed has a rugged, good looking guy standing in front of a house being built. He is holding a hammer and talks about what a great tool the hammer is. But then he says nobody uses a hammer anymore to frame a house because technology has advanced and we now have nail guns, which he holds up. Then the picture immediately goes to a picture of a Toyota truck with a narrator describing all the advanced technology in a Toyota truck. The final scene in the commercial is back to the rugged dude holding the hammer and the nail gun and as he puts the hammer down he says, “Why don’t you step up into the future.” It is a very powerful message. Ford and Chevy trucks are OK but they are old school, not up to date like the Toyota that has all the modern technology. The commercial aims to create dissatisfaction with your Chevy truck and to get you to believe that Toyota offers you a better salvation, I mean, a better truck. The commercial aims to tempt you to believe in the superiority of Toyota as compared to Chevy and to switch your allegiance. In a similar way the professing Christians to whom the letter to the Hebrews is written are being tempted to believe in the superiority of Moses and the salvation he offers to Jesus and his salvation. They have a growing dissatisfaction with Jesus and his salvation due to the fact that they are being threatened with and sometimes actually experiencing persecution as Christians. These professing Christians, prior to their becoming Christians, were raised as Jews in Greek speaking Jewish synagogues. There are some among them who are proposing that life with Moses is better than life with Jesus. They have pointed out the supernatural origin of the OT religion through angels and have accentuated the superiority of Moses to Jesus in his delivering Israel from Egypt and meeting directly with God on Mt. Sinai to receive the law. They have drawn attention in particular to that passage we read in Numbers 12 where God describes Moses as unique among men in the way that God speaks to him. Therefore, the author in chapter 1 has contrasted the Son with angels and in chapter 2 has shown that the world to come is not given to angels but to the obedient man Jesus and all his brothers and he now, in chapter 3, contrasts Jesus with Moses directly. Twice in these six verses he alludes to Numbers 12:7 (vv. 2 & 5) in order to compare and contrast Jesus to Moses. God says of Moses there, "…he is faithful in all my house." God's aim through this author is to convince these people and us that reliance on Jesus, not Moses or any other “savior” is the best way to live. Jesus is the trustworthiest person in the universe and therefore he and his salvation must be the foundation of our lives. We must not rely on any other savior or hope in any other salvation. MAIN POINT You must completely rely upon Christ, not any other person because…I. God sent him to do what no one else could do, not even Moses (v. 1) Everything the author says in v. 1 is aimed to direct their attention to everything he has just told them. It is a masterful summation of chapters 1-2. He calls them “holy brothers” in light of 2:9-18. Jesus tasted death for all those whom he is not ashamed to call brothers. Jesus, by his death, made all his brothers holy. He in essence says to them, “You are a people set apart to God and you are the brothers of the Son of God who became man because Jesus was sent by God as his unique representative to be your high priest.” In addition, he says, you are people who share in the heavenly calling. That is, Jesus, who is currently seated at God's right hand in heaven, has called you to come join him in the new heavens and the new earth, that is, the world to come, which will submit to you perfectly because of his perfect obedience to the Father. The calling is both his invitation to join him and his power to conquer their enemies and bring them safely to him. The eternal Son, who became man and as man is great David’s greater Son and who is now seated at God’s right hand, waiting for the day when he will return to destroy his enemies, this very same Son has called you to join him in heaven along with all his brothers, the children God gave to him. Even before he utters a word about Moses, who is being set up as a competing savior with an opposing salvation, he reminds them of the enormous benefits they have received through Christ. He assumes that the best way to avoid being seduced by an alternate savior and salvation is to fix your thoughts on Jesus. The best way for the Chevy truck owner to not give in and buy a Toyota is by filling his mind with thoughts of his Chevy truck, not by filling his mind with thoughts of the Toyota truck. It’s not simply thinking about the truck but also the thoughts prompt the feelings of satisfaction and delight you have in your truck. Whenever the Bible commands us to think it is not because it views us as purely reasoning creatures who if we just thought right, if we just had the correct information we would do the right thing. Rather, it is reflecting the fact that God made us with minds to understand truth and emotions or affections to rejoice in what we understand. You think about what you delight in and your thoughts promote further delight. If right now I was to stop preaching and close my eyes and think about the view on a frosty morning, looking down from a high ridge on Shell Creek with the sun rising behind me hitting the ridge on the other side where two bald eagles sit in the top of a dead tree, my heart becomes filled with joy and with longing. I want to go there. You couldn’t convince me to go anywhere else. I will avoid every other invitation to spend my free time somewhere else. The best way to avoid sin and error is to fix your mind on the truth about Jesus and to ask God to give you delight in the truth you think about. Do you want greater faith in Christ? Do you want to more effectively bear witness to Christ? Do you want to love others more and yourself less? Then fix your thoughts on Jesus and plead for God to give you affections for the Christ you think about. The particular truth about Jesus that the author wants them to fix their thoughts upon is that Jesus is the apostle and high priest in whom we have believed. Both of these terms summarize chapters 1 & 2 and both are connected to Moses. The Greek word for apostle means “one who is sent as the representative of the king to do his will.” In Exodus 3:10 God says to Moses, “I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” The author is setting them up for the contrast he is about to make. In the same way that Moses is sent to bring Israel out of Egypt so God sent Christ to bring his people, the seed of Abraham, out of their slavery to the devil, as he just said in 2:14-18. In addition, the way that Jesus rescues his people is as the high priest who offers an acceptable sacrifice for their sins. Again, Moses, though only one time called a priest, yet performs all the acts of the high priest prior to Aaron’s ordination. So Jesus is the ultimate apostle and high priest, of which Moses was but a type. Jesus is God's representative, sent to do his will, which is to serve as high priest for his people in order to make the atoning sacrifice for our sins. This is what we are to think about and rejoice in. This is how to live the Christian life. You think about how God sent Jesus to represent him and to rescue us by his work as our high priest. You fix thoughts of Christ and his life and death and resurrection and present intercession in your mind and you ask God to cause those thoughts to burn in your heart, creating delight and longing for Christ. Your ability to stand up to sin and to not be overcome by suffering, nor to be led astray by charismatic teachers who offer you another salvation is entirely dependent upon whether your mind is fixed on the truth about Christ and those thoughts are inflaming delight in Christ. You don’t live the Christian life by concentrating on what you are or are not doing, but on Christ and what he has done and is doing. You must completely rely upon Christ, not any other person because…
II. He is the builder of all things, including God’s house (vv. 2-4) In v. 2 the author compares Jesus to Moses. He shows how they are similar. They are similar in three ways. First, God appoints them both to their respective positions. Second, they both have work to do that is associated with God’s house. Third and most importantly, they both were faithful to do what God appointed them to do. Jesus and Moses share this trait in common; they both completed the task God assigned to each of them. Now, the author is convinced that if these people abandon Christ and embrace Moses they will go to hell. We saw that in chapter 2:1-4 and we are going to see it in what follows this passage in chapters 3 & 4. Yet, before he shows them how much greater Christ is than Moses he acknowledges the role that Moses played in God’s work. He recognizes that their temptation to trust in Moses is not completely irrational. Moses is an important person in God’s house. It's the same with us. Most of the alternate saviors and salvations that we are tempted to believe in are not blatantly evil. Trusting Dr. Dobson when he tells you that you can have an obedient child and a Christian home is not evil. However, if you fix your thoughts on Dr. Dobson and what he says and believe that the most necessary things in life are obedient children and a Christian home, then you will leave Christ and his salvation behind. You will have switched your allegiance. Most people do not trust the Satanic Bible and join a coven and worship Satan. Most people who do not trust Christ are trusting in saviors and salvations that are on the surface innocent and often religious and moral but they are not Jesus. In verse 3 we are told that Jesus has been considered worthy of much greater honor than Moses. While both were appointed by God and faithful to God, yet Jesus is infinitely greater than Moses. Moses is an important person in God's house, just not as important as Jesus. The first way that Jesus is greater than Moses is captured with a simple metaphor. He says the superiority of Jesus to Moses is like the superiority of the builder of a house to the house itself. Houses are good things and have a certain glory but the builder put all the glory a house possesses there. Therefore, the builder is greatly superior to the house and much more worthy of honor. When you see a beautiful, functional house you might exclaim over it and ooh and aah over it but you don’t praise the house. You don’t say, "Way to go house! You are an excellent carpenter and plumber and mason." You praise the one who made it. This is the entire idea behind the “Parade of Homes” that takes place every year. The builders association asks a variety of builders to open up homes they have recently built for the public to tour them. The aim is for the public to view the homes, to admire the craftsmanship that each builder exercised in building the home and then to either ask the builder they admire the most to build a house for them or at least recommend that builder to someone else. You don't trust a house to build your house. You trust the builder. The relationship between Jesus and Moses is Moses is the building and when you look at him you admire the one who built him, which is Jesus. Moses and his successful labor in rescuing Israel out of Egypt and receiving the law is the house that Jesus built. Moses is part of the house and a tool Jesus used to build the house. Why would you trust Moses when Jesus is the one who built Moses? Verse four at first read does not seem to fit. It is comprised of two statements. The first statement is a truism. Every house is built by someone. If you see a house in existence then you automatically know that someone built it. When you drive by a house under construction you know that someone is building it. It is not building itself. Then the second half of the verse says, "But God is the builder of all things." God therefore, has built every house that exists, because every house is a part of the creation, a part of all things. That means then that the house of Israel, of which Moses is a part and which exists due to his labor, is the house that Jesus built and is also the house that God built. Verses 3 & 4, in a round about way are once again telling us that Jesus is God. His glory is as much greater than the glory of Moses as is the glory of God greater than all of creation. This is Psalm 19: "The heavens declare the glory of God". The glorious creation does not glorify itself anymore than a house glorifies itself. Every part of creation, including Moses, Israel and the church display the greatness of God, the builder of all things, who is Jesus the builder of God's house of which Moses is a part. Why does the author use this metaphor? He uses this metaphor because of numerous statements made in the OT, beginning with Numbers 12:7 which states Moses was faithful in all God's house. In 1 Samuel 2 God tells the high priest Eli, through a prophet, that because his sons have done great evil while serving as priests and because Eli did nothing to stop them, that he is going to reject the descendants of Aaron as his priests. In v. 35 he says, "I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who will do according to what is in my heart and mind. I will firmly establish his house…" Then in 1 Chronicles 17:10-14, which is the account of Nathan telling David that rather than David building a house for the Lord, the Lord will build David's house. In vv. 10-14 he says, "I declare to you that the Lord will build a house for you… I will raise up your offspring (seed) to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be his father and he will be my son. I will never take my love away form him… I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever; his throne will be established forever." Then in Isaiah, in four verses the same verb that is used three times in Hebrews 3:3-4 that is translated "to build" is used to describe the work of God in creation and in salvation. In particular listen to this from Isaiah 43, "But now, this is what the Lord says, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you O Israel: 'Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine… Do not be afraid for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, "Give them up!" and to the south, "Do not hold them back." Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of he earth--everyone who is called by my name, whom I built for my glory, whom I formed and made." The reason the author used the metaphor of the builder and the building is because the OT says that God is going to raise up one who is a priest and who is his son and who is a descendant of David to build his house. These texts also say that God is the one who builds this house as he is the builder of everything. He builds the universe and he builds his people, which as we are about to see is his house. Before I move on please notice again the point. If you rely on anyone or anything other than Jesus, you are relying on what is built, not the builder. How absolutely irrational it would be to ask a house to build you a house! How foolish it is to build your life on a created thing when the creator of all things, the builder of the church is available for you to trust? You must completely rely upon Christ, not any other person because…
III. He is the Son over the house, not a servant in the house (vv. 5-6a) The metaphor and thus the comparison between Jesus and Moses shifts a little bit in vv. 5-6. Before we look at that contrast lets observe that the author identifies God's house. The house of God, of which Moses is a part and which Jesus built because he is the builder of everything is the church. Do you see that in the middle of v. 6? The really important thing to notice here is that God does not have two houses, the house Moses built and the house Jesus built, Israel and the church. There is one people of God throughout all of history. Moses is a member of that house, that church as is Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. All believers in the promised Savior, Jesus Christ, are members of God's house. The only difference between Abraham and you, if you are trusting in Jesus, is that Abraham believed in the Savior who was to come and you believe in the Savior who has come. Now look at Moses' function in and relationship to God's house, God's elect people. He is a servant in that house. Moses is a servant of the church, the one people of God, believing Israel, and not national, ethnic Israel. His job as a servant in that house was to "bear witness to the things that were to be spoken in the future." The "things to be spoken in the future" is referring to the gospel. It is the message that Jesus is God's Son, sent to earth by God to be the perfect high priest in behalf of all the people of God to offer himself as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Here is the key to unlock the meaning of the entire Bible. Moses in all that he did and said was bearing witness to Christ. That's why Jesus said in John 5 that Moses wrote about him. Moses' entire life points to Christ. The law he gave in its entirety is about Jesus. God has been preaching the gospel of Christ since the creation of the world and Moses is among the greatest of all his servants who bore witness to Christ. But, he is merely a servant in the house to point every member of God's house to Jesus who is the goal, the end, the fulfillment of all that Moses wrote. In contrast to Moses who is a servant in the house, Jesus is the Son over the house. In other words he is not only the builder of the house but its owner. Moses answers to him the way that household servants answer to the master and owner of the house. I remember when I was a child, probably around ten or so, a friend invited me to come eat dinner at his house. My first response to my friend was discomfort. "I can't eat dinner at your house. What will your parents say?" I didn't feel right about going to his house because I knew he wasn't in charge. As far as I was concerned there was no way he could bring me home to dinner. It didn't matter that he wanted me to come but did his mom want me? He told me his parents would love to have me eat with them. I agreed to go only if I could stand on the porch and hear him ask his mom if I could eat dinner, without her seeing me so I could know if it was really OK for me to eat at his house. As soon as I heard him ask his mom the door swung open and she was on the porch smiling and welcoming me into their home. She was obviously delighted to have me share a meal with them and made me feel completely at home. I knew that she was in charge of the home, not my friend. Therefore, what she thought of me is what mattered, not what my friend thought. That gives a little bit of the sense of what the author is trying to get across in his comparison. Why would you trust in a servant and what he says when you have been invited into a full and personal relationship with the owner of the house? When you consider that the message of Moses is about Jesus, then why would you listen to Moses as if what he says is not about Jesus? People who read the OT as merely history of the Jewish people and the law as a description of how God wants humans to live without first finding out how the history points to Jesus and how the law is fulfilled in and with him are reading it wrong. Doing what Moses says will not make you acceptable to God. Believing in the one about whom Moses in his life and in his law is testifying is the only thing that will save you. In the wider world, there are millions of Jews and Moslems who prefer Moses to Jesus. Within the Christian church there are also segments that prefer Moses to Jesus, who do not treat Moses as merely a servant in the church while Jesus is the owner of it. However, for most of us, we are not tempted to treat Moses and what Moses says as better than Jesus and what he says. However, I do believe that many of us are regularly tempted to pay attention to what other servants in the house say, rather than to Jesus, the owner of the house. It is the task of every parent, pastor, elder, Bible school teacher, small group leader, spiritual mentor, seminary professor, seminar leader to bear witness to Christ and his salvation. He is the builder of the house and its owner. Any teacher who is not aiming at exalting Christ and promoting his salvation is a teacher to be feared and avoided. Each of us must regularly evaluate whether or not we are listening to and relying upon Jesus the owner of the church or merely one of the servants. You must completely rely upon Christ, not any other person because…
IV. We are his house only if we rely on him (v. 6b) The end of verse 6 is a warning that serves as a transition into an extended warning in 3:7-4:14. Here we have, really for the first time in this letter a statement regarding who are members of God's house, which Jesus built and over which Jesus is the Son. Everyone who holds fast to their confidence ("courage" in the NIV) and the hope of which we boast are members of God's house. What is that confidence we must hold fast to? What is the hope of which we boast that we must hold tightly to? The confidence that we must hold onto is described in 4:16 and 10:19. It is the boldness we have to approach God's throne of grace in prayer to find help and mercy each day. It is the boldness we have to enter into the very presence of God through the blood of Jesus. This confidence is faith in Christ as the one who has, by his life and death, gained the right for me to enter into God's presence without fear of being burned up in his wrath. And it is my daily drawing near to God by faith in Christ through prayer. This confidence is not merely a passive thing. Let's say I wanted to go watch a Badger football game. I don't have a ticket and so if I tried to enter the stadium I would be thrown out. I have no confidence that I can get into the game and so I don't even bother going. But let's say that Les and Laurie Mitchell gave me their tickets to a game. Now I have confidence that if I go I can get into the stadium. However, if I don't go to the game, the ticket is useless. True confidence requires that I go to the game and use the ticket to gain entry in order to enjoy the game. People who say they have confidence to enter heaven by the blood of Jesus but who never go to God now are lying. True faith in Christ means that I am drawing near to God now in prayer and in praise. My thoughts are fixed on Christ and the salvation he has provided. I draw near to God, who is a consuming fire, now because I have confidence that Christ has won the right for me to enter God's presence. What is the hope in which we boast? Hope in the Bible is not uncertain, like a wish. It's not "I hope I get a trip to Sweden for Christmas." It is the certainty we have of joining Jesus in the new heavens and the new earth. We know, with utter certainty, that one day we will rule, with Jesus, the world that is to come. We will safely live with God forever. However, it isn't simply that we know we're going there but that we boast about going there. This is not a prideful thing. It's humble because we know we are going to inherit salvation not because of what we have done but because of what Jesus did. Emily Butteris gave my youngest daughter Jaimee a birthday present when she turned 8 this past October. She made a little gift certificate that stated she would take Jaimee out to any restaurant she wanted to go to for breakfast. From that day until the day Emily took Jaimee out for breakfast Jaimee boasted to us that she was going to get to go to breakfast at Perkins with Emily. She was going to get to eat chocolate chip pancakes and bacon and she was going to get chocolate milk to drink and it would be just her and Emily and it was going to be so much fun. She was not doing this in any kind of mean or spiteful way. She was simply expressing the joy and anticipation she had of going out with Emily. Like my daughter we boast in our hope of heaven. This is the evidence that you are a part of God's house, his church, for which Christ died. There awaits me not the blackness and nothingness of annihilation, not the horror of hell but life with God in a perfect universe without sin and death. That's something to boast about. You must completely rely upon Christ, not any other person because…
© Copyright 2006 John Swanson.
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