JESUS GREATER THAN MOSES
Hebrews 3:1-19
Key Verse: 3:6
“But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.”
As a follow-up to the message on chapter 2 we will learn how to go to Jesus for the help we are invited to come to him for. Moreover the passage reminds us of the failure of the Israelites whom God rescued out of Egypt to enter the rest God had prepared for them. God has also promised us a heavenly rest. Our heavenly calling is an intangible gift given to believers in Jesus right now. This is why in this chapter we are twice encouraged to hold onto our heavenly hope. As we read the passage the author reveals there are real dangers in our Christian life. Temptations, trials of all kinds, unbelief and the deceitfulness of sin all conspire to destroy our faith needed to enter into God’s rest he has prepared for us. Let us now listen to the teaching of this chapter and learn how we can come to Jesus to find the help needed to achieve our heavenly calling.
Chapter 3 begins with “Therefore” meaning chapter 2 teachings lead into chapter 3. In chapter 2 twice we are taught God sent Jesus to help humanity. 2:16: “For surely it is not angels he helps but Abraham’s descendents, and 2:18: “Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Now in this passage the author shows us very practically how we can connect ourselves to Jesus to find the help that chapter 2 informs us Jesus is able and willing to give us. Let us read verse 1. “Therefore holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.” Unlike in this life where we need at least a phone to call someone for help, to find help from Jesus all we need to do is fix our thoughts on him. Missionary Joshua Kim shared before he personally believed Jesus Christ he couldn’t concentrate on his school studies because his thoughts were distracted by many vague fears and other unfruitful thoughts. Then when he began thinking about Jesus he discovered this was the help he needed to concentrate on his school studies. I remember once I was sitting among my parents, 17 grandchildren along with my sisters and their husbands. Some of the older grandchildren in their teens begin erupting into coarse joking and irreverent conversations. We parents began to feel uncomfortable but none of us wanted to rebuke the children because their parents sat in the same room. Finally one of my sisters spoke up and said: “Why doesn’t one of you men say something?” Since I am recognized as a bible teacher in my family I meekly spoke up and address the teens with this question: “Do you know what “WWJD” means? To my amazement most knew what the letters stood for. “What Would Jesus Do?” Then I asked,’ Do you think Jesus would talk the way you are talking?” This is all I had to say. Immediately by helping them think what Jesus would do, they ceased their godless conversations.
Look again at the contents of verse 2. We notice the author addresses his readers as holy brothers who share in the heavenly calling. In this life we are not always very certain what our calling is. As we see here every true believer is given a heavenly calling. In context with this chapter what this means is God has called every true believer not to Florida or to a retirement home but to heaven. Hebrews 11:9, 10 talk of the heavenly calling Abraham and the other patriarchs lived their lives for: “By faith he made his home in the Promised Land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” By the wonderful grace of God he has given us a heavenly calling as he did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Achieving this Heavenly calling is the main reason we need to go to Jesus for help.
Look at 1b: “Fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.” Above all other help we should look to Jesus Christ for is to achieve this heavenly calling. He does this when we make the personal decision to fix our thoughts on him. I can’t make you fix your thoughts on Jesus. Nor can you make me fix my thoughts on Jesus. The one single area of our life God has given each person is our personal thought life. People can push us to go to Christian schools, church and fellowship meetings but no one can make us think about Jesus Christ. It’s entirely up to the free will of each one of us to either decide we will fix our thoughts on Jesus or we won’t fix our thoughts on Jesus. If we choose not to fix our thoughts on Jesus we find other thoughts come into our mind and hijack our thoughts. These anti-Jesus thoughts can actually lead us farther and farther from our heavenly calling.
This is why the writer calls Jesus the apostle. According to John 3:34 “apostle” means “sent from God.” According to bible scholars all collections of the first four books in the New Testiment were placed in the Holy Bible because they had been approved by one of Jesus’s apostles. For example Mark’s gospel was approved by Peter and Luke’s gospel by Apostle Paul. Here we see Jesus is an Apostle sent directly from God himself to us. In others words there is absolutely no one more qualified to guide us back to God and his kingdom than Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ God’s Son is the only compass we need to guide us back to the Kingdom of God. As you know Jesus boldly proclaimed to his confused disciples in John 14:6: “I am the way, truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” To find our way back to God we need only to fix our thoughts on Jesus.
There is one more point about fixing our thoughts on Jesus. Should we start fixing our thoughts on Jesus today or tomorrow? To help answer this question let’s read verses 7, 13 and 15. “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” The passage teaches us Today we should start fixing our thoughts on Jesus because there might not be a tomorrow. I am always amazed how many white crosses I see planted along the highways. Only Jesus knows if these people were thinking about him when they tragically died in an accident. What is certain before their sudden death each one was certain there was going to be a tomorrow. In reality none of us can guarantee we’ll be living tomorrow to find time to fix our thoughts on Jesus. Moreover we can’t even be sure we will even be able to have the capacity to fix our thoughts on Jesus. Once I broke my back. As I lay alone in severe pain in the emergency room a very kind EMT held my hand to comfort me. He shared with me his heart to help people with mental illnesses. The man helped me understand our mind’s ability to even be able to think about Jesus can suddenly be taken from us. We think because we can work or go to college our mind is strong. Go to the mental wards of every major hospital around here and you will be humbled. You will find people who are geniuses who can’t even be trusted with a toothbrush. Today is the day we must fix our thoughts on Jesus. Tomorrow we very well may not even be able to fix our fragile thoughts on Jesus.
Look at verses 2-4: “He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of the house had greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.” The writer of Hebrews obviously wrote this letter to Hebrew Christians who knew of Moses before they knew Jesus. My wife once lived in Queens, NY, which is regarded by some as the home of the largest community of Orthodox Jews in the United States. To these Jews Moses is a serious man to be held in the highest honor. She shared this experience when a Missionary named Moses went to one of the community pools in Queens that was frequented by many Orthodox Jews. Someone at the pool shouted over the noise of the pool crowd; “Moses!” The moment the people in and around the pool heard the name, Moses, you couldn’t hear a pin drop. With very serious faces they looked for the person who was named Moses. To these people no one is greater than Moses except God Himself. The author of Hebrew in verse 3 writes Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. Jesus Christ is God incarnate. Moses’ greatness according to verse 5 was the fact he was a faithful servant in God’s house. That he faithfully testified to the coming of the Christ. Jesus is the fulfillment of Moses’ testimony. Jesus is the Son over the house Moses served in. In this passage what the author is teaching is that even though Moses was faithful we must understand Moses was actually faithfully serving Christ the Son over God’s house. Jesus is the one we should think about to please, not Moses. Jesus, not Moses, is the one who can help us.
Look at verse 6: “But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.” God has placed Jesus his Son over his house. In this verse it is interesting what the author writes we have to do to be part of Jesus’ house. He writes if we hold onto our courage and the hope of which we boast.” Indeed for an Orthodox Jew to confess Jesus to be the Christ would mean excommunications both from his Jewish community and family. I have heard of Jews who confessed Jesus as their Messiah not only be forced to leave their families, their parents would never say another word to them even as the parent lay dying on their death bed. To be a messianic Jew takes great courage. Holding on to this kind of courage is what the author says we must do to become part of Jesus’ house. This week as my daughter Mary Anna dressed to go to school she put on a shirt that had written across it in huge highlighted words: “Jesus Christ is my Shepherd.” My wife who is a public school teacher knows the public school system opposes especially clothing that shows any personal faith in Jesus. Her first reaction was to tell her to wear something else that’s not controversial in a public school. But she repented and told my daughter she should wear it if she really wanted to wear it. Mary Anna thought it over and wore it. When she came home from school, she told her mother that some of her classmates asked her questions on its meaning and she read it aloud and explained the meaning to them. We must hold onto our courage and the hope of which we boast. Now we will study about a time when God’s people lost their courage and the hope of which they boast.
Part 2 Warning against Unbelief (7-19)
Spanish philosopher George Santayana wrote: “Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.” In a bit of contrast and with more pessimism the English writer Aldous Haxly wrote: “The most important thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history.” Both men bring forth applicable points when it comes to learning or not learning from history. As we know since the Bible is nothing less than the words of God Almighty it is very optimistic. As a result it is not surprising we find God uses his history to teach future generations not to make the same mistake of previous generations.
Let us now read the history lesson given us in this chapter in verses 16-18. “Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies felled in the desert? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.” Last week I was asked what movie I thought was the best movie of all time. One of the first movies that came to my mind was movie called “Ten Commandments.” This classic reenacted God’s judgments of Egypt. It showed the plague of blood, plague of frogs, then the plague of gnats and the plague of flies. On top of these came the plague of livestock, hail and locusts and darkness. The last plague was that of the firstborn. The movie showed God’s plague in a blues mist form snaking down deserted dark Egyptian streets and going only in the homes of the Egyptians killing the firstborn prisoners, Egyptian livestock all the way up to Pharaoh’s own firstborn. As a grand finale the movie showed God using Moses’ staff to open the Red Sea, so all the Hebrews walked across on dry land. When the Egyptians charged after them God closed the Red Sea upon them. Not withstanding, according to today’s passage the movie missed the main point of that generation. The main point was even with all God’s show of great miracles to save his people only two men and their families were able to enter his rest. All the others God saved out of Egypt eventually fell dead in desert because of either sin or unbelief.
What then is the lesson we can learn from this? Let us read verses 12 and 13. “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” What we learn is that even though God may start great and majestic work in our lives, sin or unbelief can slowly slip into our lives and like the Israelites we just read about can turn us away from the living God. This possibility is my greatest fear as a Christian. If any Christian does not fear this possibility I feel that is not a good sign. I have heard of preachers who pastured thousands of people only to have their ministry come crashing down around them because of immoral behavior. Did you know Elvis Presley’s first love was singing for the Lord Jesus Christ? I have a couple of his CD’s filled with his gospel songs he sang when he first began to record his music. Sometimes I think my family wishes I didn’t play them again and again. I do it because his songs actually help me to earnestly call on Jesus to take my hand and lead me forward into the great unknown, especially the unknown of death, judgment and the life to come. As for the man himself when you look back at his life prior to his rock’n roller type of death, money, women, fame extreme over indolence marked his life. I truly hope Jesus brings this man into his rest. Nevertheless I see the author warning about the power of the deceitfulness of sin can lead even the most sincere.
What can we possibly do to prevent ourselves from making the same mistake as these Israelites? Look at verse 13. “But encourage one another daily as long as it is called today so that none of you may be hardened by sins deceitfulness.” These days one preacher is boldly teaching his flock to leave the encouragement of Christian churches. He tells them each one should just stay home and listen to his preaching on TV. It wouldn’t be so bad if he said leave the churches and go into all the un-church part of the world and preach the gospel. But he’s teaching people leave all source of encouragement and go home. This to me is exactly what causes people to slip into sins deceitfulness. Every time I come to the bible center I am encouraged. I am encouraged by the young people’s zeal to serve the Lord. I am encouraged by the older people’s example of delighting themselves in the word of the Lord. Often I have been around God’s people and they rebuke me for one reason or another. These too encourage me because every time I have received a rebuke with a humble learning mind God has blessed me.
Finally look at verse 14 “We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.” Here we find the whole purpose why we struggle to fix our thoughts on Jesus, why we endure hardships for Jesus and why we fellowship with God’s people. We have this great promise that if we keep our confidence in Christ to the end we will by the grace of God share his eternal glory with him. We will be like him. He will be our brother and share his inheritance, glory and power for all eternity with us.
From today’s passage we learn why we should fix our thoughts on Jesus. When we do our lives always choose the best way. We also learn we should encourage one another as long as it is called Today so that we may not be hardened by sins deceitfulness. Today let us pray and ask Jesus to help us to be faithful to the end so we can share with him his eternal glory.