Hebrews 3:1-6
Hebrews chapter 3, please turn over there for what we’re going to see in this section from verses 1 to 6. This is the pastor comparing and contrasting Jesus with Moses, a couple of points of comparison.
And as the pastor goes through and compares Jesus with Moses, you understand that what he’s essentially driving at in this section is to turn his people away from going back to Moses, so to speak, back to the synagogue and keep them stayed right there in the local church where they are tempted to depart.
So he wants to keep them with Christ, not going back to Moses, going back to the law, going back to the synagogue, but keep them standing firm, staying put in the Christian church, in the Christian congregation there, in one of the house churches in Rome.
It’s a risky thing for any pastor, preacher, teacher to say or teach things that others might perceive as seen as messing with their heroes, like Moses in this case. I’ve experienced this in my life, having worked alongside I might say modern-day heroes, people who, highly regarded, highly respected; or even in some of my study having conducted some deeper, more thorough research into historical heroes.
If you say anything that sounds maybe critical, anything that maybe gives another side to the the lionization of a historical figure, sometimes I can come across to people who highly esteem those historical figures as, You’re just being unfair or critical. And some people can get very protective if they sense some slight even if there is no slight intended whatsoever, even where no offense was conveyed.
But we should recognize, all of us as Christians, we should recognize that every servant of God, whether contemporary or historical, every servant suffers the same kinds of treacherous inconsistency of the flesh. Every servant of God, every human servant of God, lives under the curse. They have that saying,
“The best of men are men at best,” right? That’s a true statement, unless you’re messing with my hero, and then don’t say that. “All men have feet of clay,” except for this favorite teacher of mine.
So we want to be careful to remember that, and it’s sometimes hard to see how subtly we can idolize our heroes. But it is a very common temptation, and it does mark a need for further maturity in ourselves so that we don’t perceive our own identity as tied to that hero. It’s good to esteem servants of God. It’s good to appreciate them, love them, honor them, respect them. But to idolize them, yeah, that’s obviously going too far.
Paul used the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians to address this very issue in the Corinthian congregation. He confronted it and corrected it. He says right there in chapter 1, after a little greeting, he says, “Each of you is saying this, that I don’t want to hear: ‘I’m of Paul’ or ‘I’m of Apollos’ or ‘I’m of Cephas’ or ‘I’m of Christ.’”
And he’s indicting them for that sectarian, divisive spirit, which is really a manifestation of pride, a deep, deep pride in the Corinthian church. And as you go through the Corinthian letter, the first one, you do see a lot of pride that is manifesting itself in many different faults and errors and sins within that church.
Paul indicts the Corinthians for that very thing. He says in 1 Corinthians 3:1, he says, “You’re fleshly men when you think like this. You’re infants in Christ and you need to grow up. You need to stop thinking this way, talking this way, dividing among yourselves.” There truly is pride in a sectarian spirit, becoming puffed up in the heart and disregarding one another in the church. It ought not to be.
And in some way, this is what the pastor in Hebrews is dealing with, but in a more significant way, with a great consequence of not just factions within the church, but a whole element or elements within the church leaving to go back to the synagogue.
Members of this Hebrew Christian congregation, they’re being intimidated by their friends or family members. They’re being encouraged by their family members to just stop meeting with these Christians because, you’re going to be under the fires of persecution. You’re going to be marginalized. You’re going to lose your jobs. No one’s going to like you. And it gets worse from there.”
But he says, I don’t want you to give first place to Moses. Moses is wonderful. He is a wonderful servant of God. He is great, but I want you to give honor and glory and be loyal to the one of whom Moses testified and who he ultimately served.
So before he goes on with a further confrontation of the members of his congregation, those who are waffling, those who are about to depart, and some of them have been kind of going back and forth, the pastor reminds his folks of the superiority of Jesus over Moses. And that’s this section.
So Hebrews 3:1-6, “Therefore, holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus, who was faithful to him who appointed him, as Moses also was in all his house.
“For he has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, insomuch as the builder of the house has more honor than the house. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.
“Now Moses was faithful in all his house as a servant for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later. But Christ was faithful as a Son over His house, whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope.”
So in this section, the pastor is really making a single point. And it’s this point: that Jesus is superior to Moses, and all who see that clearly hold fast to him alone and boast in him alone. And when they do that, when they see him, hold fast to him, boast in him, every other servant finds their place in the house that they serve, and they’re rightly honored, rightly regarded, rightly esteemed, but never above and over Christ himself.
So the single point: Jesus is superior to Moses. Everyone who sees that holds fast to him alone, boasts in him alone. They stay put. They stay put in the church.
We might expand that a little bit since we live in a time of some element of hero worship or fawning over celebrity status or people of renown, even though none of us admit to such a sin for ourselves. But whether it’s subtle or overt, we tend to regard those who bring attention to themselves much more than those who are just quietly faithful.
There are a lot of quietly faithful pastors, servants, Christians out there, but they don’t draw attention to themselves. You have to know what you’re looking for and in wisdom regard those who are quiet and faithful in their service and seek them out and get to know them. But don’t be looking for those people who are drawing attention to themselves, whether it’s online or in public or whatever it is.
God regards faithfulness. It’s very clear in Scripture, very clear, especially that, if you want to read the Corinthian epistle, you’ll find that in the first four chapters, especially, God regards faithfulness.
And faithfulness doesn’t draw a lot of attention to itself. People who are faithful, they’re not concerned about getting praise, glory, honor, esteem. They’re actually interested in deflecting that where it belongs: to God and God alone and to his Christ.
So Moses, here in this section, obviously, he’s commended for his faithfulness, but Christ has a superior and a superlative faithfulness even to Moses for which he is awarded the highest honor and the highest esteem and the highest glory.
So when you think back to people you talk to you, sometimes people regard those they listen to on the Internet or a good Bible teacher and author, a theology professor, someone in their life that they regard, there’s no problem in regarding people and appreciating their teaching and appreciating the investment that’s been made into you.
But think about historical figures as well. You can name, like, your favorite Calvin, Luther, Goodwin, Owen. Put it biblically, Paul, Apollos, Cephas, who do you regard, or even Moses. And the Jews, here, the Hebrew Christians, they had a good argument to make about Moses being someone to esteem very, very highly.
It’s good to esteem the servants of God and appreciate them. But again, watch that your esteem doesn’t drift over into an uncritical loyalty and especially into an idolatry that regards some flesh and blood over Christ himself.
So the pastor says, let’s, let’s take the most celebrated, the most revered figure of Hebrew history, Moses. Let’s compare him side-by-side with Jesus, who is, calls him “the Apostle and the High Priest of our confession.” And he says, let’s see how Moses stacks up.
So first, just two points for this evening. Number one, Jesus is most faithful. Jesus is most faithful. First couple verses, “Therefore, holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus, who was faithful to Him who appointed him, just as Moses also was in all his house.”
In referring to, the house, his house, God’s house, this is not speaking of the tabernacle only. It’s not speaking of the tent of meeting only. This is about more than priestly service, here.
By house, the pastor is referring to the entirety of what Israel represented, politically and religiously. So he’s showing that Jesus, he fulfills in his ministry in God’s house, in his ministry over God’s house, he fulfills all three aspects and roles of his mediatorship. He is the prophet, priest, and king.
And so we need to think about this term house, this expression as expansive and not just limited to the priesthood even though his high priestly ministry is on display all throughout Hebrews. And it’s really the epistle that elevates this role of Christ, the priestly role of Christ, like no other.
Two things to point out, here, though. First is, there’s a comparison that they share Jesus and Moses, and it’s in this description. They share this comparison of Apostle and Priest or Apostle and High Priest. And we’ll get to that in a second. They also, secondly, they have relative degrees of faithfulness, but the quality of faithfulness they share, but there is a relativity in degree, differing in degree.
Just to be clear, as I go back to the first point I was making that the comparison they share, Jesus and Moses is in the description Apostle and High Priest, we need to understand, and I think you know this, that Moses was never referred to in Scripture as an Apostle, okay? I just want to state the obvious in case there’s any confusion.
We also need to realize that this is the only place in Scripture that Jesus himself is called an Apostle. So it’s, it’s not a title that’s, that’s assigned to Jesus, except here it’s not a title that’s assigned to Moses. And yet the role is there.
When we think about calling Jesus a priest, he’s not often in Scripture called a priest outside of Hebrews. It’s not really easy to find, though he acts in that role, and he does priestly things. But Psalm 110 verse 4 is the place outside of Hebrews that calls him a high priest, a high priest, but according to a different order, right? Not, not the Aaronic order.
But both Moses and Jesus were Apostles, and Apostles par excellence. And when I say Apostle, I’m just speaking of the fact that they are those who were sent by God. Apostello is the verb, to send, and they were those who were sent, so sent by God to build God’s house.
Both of these men also acted as high priest with Jesus named, as I said, not after an Aaronic priesthood or order, but after a Melchizedekian order of priesthood. That’s going to come up later in Hebrews, so I’m not going to expound on it now.
But we know in Moses’ case, with God choosing Moses, he chose Aaron as the high priest, and Aaron’s family, then, would be the high priestly family. And yet we can also see throughout the narrative of the Pentateuch how Moses often acted as high priest.
He acted, actually, more faithfully than Aaron ever did, right? I mean, one of Aaron’s first priestly acts was to make a golden calf and become the worship leader. That was not a good move, not a good call as your first act of priesthood.
But then when God came to judge at that time, it wasn’t Aaron, but Moses who intervened for the people. Aaron had compromised himself. Moses steps into the slot, and he acts as the high priest and the mediator between God and Israel. He interceded for the people, and God listened to that interceding of Moses.
He treated him as the high priest. He treated him in that role and regarded him in that way as he was doing the work of the high priest. And he gave, as we know, his mercy instead of his wrath.
So Moses was faithful. He was also, he was faithful to God as his Apostle. He was sent by God to serve the house of Israel. He acted as the mediator, acting as a high priest for the people. And he was faithful as an Apostle and as a high priest, though he didn’t have the title, but he did act in those roles and did that kind of work, and he was as faithful as a fallen man can be.
And we could definitely say this along with the writer to the Hebrews, along with the members of his congregation, who highly regard Moses. We can agree with them and say that until Jesus came, we’d have to say that Moses was the golden standard of faithfulness, faithful service, both as one who is sent to do a job and take on a mission and build a house, but also as someone who was a mediator, a high priest.
Then when Jesus came, we saw what faithfulness really looked like, didn’t we? Perfect faithfulness without any flaw; consistent, constant, never faltering and never failing. Jesus is superior, and so amazing every time I read through any of the Gospels and I just see not one lapse in his character, ever.
He never cracked. There’s not one instance of failure, whether morally or ethically. There’s no gray areas in his life. He always seemed to see black and white as black and white. And he had the wisest and most merciful way, not a harsh way of going through black and white issues, but a gentle way, a patient way, a wise way of working through issues, confronting people, clarifying issues. He never failed in his service to God. He never failed.
Stopping to consider his roles, Jesus’ roles as Apostle and as high priest, as I said, this is the only text that names Jesus as God’s Apostle.
But in many texts, especially throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus, he says explicitly, and he uses the verb of apostleship, apostello, referring to himself as one who is sent by God. And they demonstrate that God sent Jesus, and God sent Jesus in an official capacity, taking on an official role to be his chosen and commissioned son and servant to his house. If you take notes and want to write these down, John 3:17, 3:34, John 5:36, John 6:29, John 6:57, John 7:29, John 8:42, John 10:36, 11:42, and 17:3.
People who are faithful, they’re not concerned about getting praise, glory, honor, esteem.” Travis Allen
As God’s chosen Apostle, Jesus never ever shied away from his duty. He was willing and eager always to do his father’s will, always eager to do his father’s will. He said in John 4:34, he said, “‘My food,’” what’s “my food?” “‘My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish his work.’”
Doing God’s will is what fed his soul, and to not do God’s will for him is akin to starvation. It’s a very strong picture of what it meant for him to eagerly be the sent one sent by God and be that capital “A” Apostle. John 5:30, he said, “‘I don’t seek my own will, but I do seek the will of Him who sent me.’”
That’s it. That’s how he lived. He didn’t ever say, you know, I could really use a break. Hey, you guys, want to go to the movies? He never frequented, you know, bars, never said, Hey, let’s go dancing. Can you imagine if, if our, if our Gospels had that stuff in it?
We can’t imagine it because we do see him as superlatively faithful every moment of every day. His one aim is to serve, is to serve his Father’s will, do his Father’s bidding, do the thing that he was sent to do. That is Apostle par excellence. There is no one even second in that list. It’s just him.
The pastor is going to say later in the epistle, Hebrews 12:2, he said, “It was for the joy that was set before him” that Jesus did the father’s will. And doing the father’s will had a real dark side to it, didn’t it? Had a real valley of suffering. He endured the cross. He despised the shame. And it’s amazing times that he went through. It’s got to be an amazing experience of a loneliness that he felt.
I know some of you have gone through trials where you feel absolutely alone. No one can understand, no one’s with you, no one’s there, no one gets it. You try to explain, and no one can even make sense of what you’re trying to talk about.
That would be Jesus. No one can really identify with him. He had to endure this alone. This cross work was his and his alone to bear, and yet he never shied away from it. Instead, he eagerly ran toward the cross. He ran toward the action, because it was for the joy set before him that he rejoiced to do it.
He endured the cross, despised the shame. He has received now the reward of glory, sitting down at the father’s right hand at the throne of God. And that’s what the record shows throughout the Gospels is how faithful he was, how eager, how much he rejoiced to do the father’s will.
And I’m not, in elevating Christ just as we should, that’s not to cast any shade on Moses at all. It’s just by contrast we see the time of Moses’ calling, right? If you want to go back to Exodus chapter 3 and 4, we’ll take a look at a couple sections, there, if you’d like to follow.
But I just noticed the clear contrast that there is between Moses as a sent one of God to be a leader and a builder in God’s house. And then, man, just the superlative kind of, not even a contrast because Christ is so high and so above him that Moses sounds a lot like you and I. He sounds a lot like us.
When God appeared to Moses in the bush, remember in Exodus 3:10, God said to Moses, he said, “‘Come now, I’m going to send you to Pharaoh.’” There’s that word send. In the Septuagint, it would be apostello; it’d be send or pempo. It could be the word pempo. But it’s to send. “‘And I’m going to send you to Pharaoh so that you may bring my people out of Egypt.’”
You remember how Moses responded? You know, for the joy set before me, I will bring your people out. No, he didn’t say that, right? Remember, he protested. And at first, his protest sounds really, really mild, even humble. What a stellar servant to be: Oh, not me. I’m, you know, I’m humble. Exodus 3:11: “‘Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?’”
And I love God’s answer because it kind of exposes the faux humility that’s there. He says, It’s not about you, Moses, it’s about me. I will be with you. Don’t worry. I’m not sending you alone, Moses. It’s not according to your strength, your power. It’s not all about you. It’s really about me proving my power over Egypt and all of its gods, all of its power. I’m going to be with you.
Well, Moses didn’t let that rest. His heart becomes clear as the text moves on. He becomes bolder and says the people will not accept him. See, God didn’t really think this thing through. Exodus 3:13, God said to Moses, “‘I am who I am.’” So if you have concerns about them accepting you, receiving you, thinking that you are or are not a true prophet of mine, I want you to go and reveal I am who I am. That’s what you should say to them. “‘Say to the sons of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.”’” And he gives Moses his memorial name, a memorial name, meaning an eternal name. This is what characterizes him.
What happens next? Moses protests again, Exodus 4 verse 1. Well, “what if they won’t believe me?” You see, Lord, I’m, I’m way ahead of you in these steps about how this isn’t going to work and how I’m not the right guy. “What if they don’t believe me and they won’t listen to my voice?” What is Moses doing? He’s thinking purely in human terms, right? Man, do you do this? I do this. We all do this.
So God gave him the ability to do signs. He turned his staff into a serpent. He made his hand leprous, and then he cleansed the leprosy. He had him pour Nile water out onto the ground and turn it into blood.
Remember what happened next? Moses said, Okay, got it, got the lesson learned. No. Look at chapter 4, verse 10. “Moses said to Yahweh, ‘Please, Lord, I’ve never been a man of words.’” Listen to these words though: “‘Neither recently nor in times past, nor since You’ve spoken to Your slave.’”
That sounds pretty eloquent to me, eloquent in protest. “‘Neither recently nor in times past.’” I just imagined him standing up, and “‘Neither recently nor in times past,’” you know, ever since “‘You’ve spoken to your slave; for I am one with a hard mouth and a hard tongue.’” You see and hear it rattling around in my mouth.
“Yahweh said to him, ‘Who made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, Yahweh?’” Moses, who are you talking to? “‘So now, go, and I, even I, I will be,’” I’ll not only be with you, Moses, I’ll be with your body parts too. “‘I will be with your mouth, and I will instruct you in what you shall speak.’”
Then what again? “But he said, ‘Please, Lord, now, send now the message by whomever you will.’” I, I chose you! Get the point? You know! “And then the anger of Yahweh burned against Moses, and He said, ‘Is there not your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he can certainly speak,’” okay? If we got trouble with the mouth, I found the guy. And it says down in verse 16, “‘So he shall speak for you to the people. He’ll become as a mouth to you, and you’ll become as God to him.”’
Talk about putting God to the test. And then look at Hebrews 3 in the commentary on Moses, “faithful in all of his house.” Think about your failings in service. Think about all your wranglings, sometimes your lack of faith, your lack of believing strongly, sometimes sinning.
But God looks at the course of your life and the sin you’ve committed in your protesting against him and all your worrying and all your failings and failures and faltering. You know what he does? He calls that sin, and then he puts it on Christ, and he punishes him, and he covers you with Christ’s righteousness, his perfect faithfulness. So what’s the commentary on Moses? “Faithful in all his house.” Faithful.
Paul says something very similar in 1 Corinthians chapter 4: “Don’t judge anything before the time, but wait until the Lord comes.” And then he says, “Every man’s commendation will come from God.” Not that every man is perfectly worthy of commendation. We all have things that we fail in, right? He says, “Every man’s commendation will come from God.”
If Moses had been a sufficient prophet, he would not have pointed people in his own writing to look for another prophet. He says in Deuteronomy 18:15, “‘Yahweh, your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from among your brothers, and you shall listen to him.’” So he points ahead.
If Moses was a sufficient high priest, if Aaron had been faithful, would Psalm 110, verse 4 have sought a better pattern of priestly ministry? Through David, God says, You, my son, the Lord, Adonai, “‘you’re a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.’”
The pastor, he’s not diminishing Moses, as I said, and he’s not exposing all of his flaws as I’ve just done, which are a matter of biblical record. And obviously his congregation knows the Old Testament well enough to know, wait a minute.
But there’s a message, there. He’s not diminishing Moses. Instead, to make the contrast, he exhorts his congregation to consider the superlative faithfulness of Christ, who is by his faithfulness that he qualified to serve as our savior and our sacrifice and our eternal high priest, which is what God sent him to do, as his chosen Apostle.
It says in chapter 2, verse 17, just the section right before this, that “he shared in our humanity and was made like his brothers in all things.” In verse 18, it says, “He was tempted in what he suffered” and yet never failed, never faltered, not once, not for a second.
And that goes into not only what he said or didn’t say or how he acted or didn’t act, but how he thought about things. There’s no sin in the mind. There’s not one ounce of unrighteous anger like some of the things we were talking about this morning.
So again, think about it for yourself, for myself. When we’re tempted, we have a breaking point. If we stand, it’s because God upholds us and delivers us from temptation. But if God is to allow that temptation to continue, we weaken and we eventually give in.
I had a professor one time I thought gave a real apt illustration of this. He said, take, like, a broom handle or something like that, and you put enough pressure on that broom handle over your leg or something. And eventually with enough pressure, enough force, it’s going to snap in half, right?
Yourself, myself, we’re like that broom handle, you know, put enough pressure, force, we’ll break. But if you take that broom handle now and lash it to, tie it to a titanium bar, now try to put force on it. The broom handle will feel the force, but it will stay firm and never break.
That’s the Lord Jesus Christ enduring under temptation, the titanium being his divine nature, the wood being his human nature, holding him fast. He felt all the pressure all the way to the very end. He felt it all.
And what is amazing is he outlasted it. He outlasted the temptation. He stood firm. He resisted every temptation to the point of outlasting every temptation. Luke 4:13, “that when the devil had finished every temptation.”
Okay, so forty days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. The devil doesn’t need to sleep. He’s a spirit. I don’t know how many seconds that are in a day and how many seconds forty days translates into. That’s a lot of time, a lot of temptation.
The devil has been living a long time. He’s seen what can get into people’s heads and how he can test them and tempt them and try them. If he puts all of his wiliness into effect, full effect with the Lord, we have three recorded for us in Matthew 4 and Luke 4, three that are representative, but he was at it the whole time.
It is amazing that when the devil had finished every temptation, he gave up. He departed from him. He gave up for the moment. He had to regroup. He had to kind of do some strategizing, and he had to come at him at a more opportune time.
And we see times like that all through his ministry as Pharisees go and challenge him and Sadducees and scribes and challenging people, and they’re always dogging his steps, always trying to trip him up, get him to fall, make him look foolish.
But we especially see the devil visiting him one last time, even though his presence there is not drawn out, but he’s there in Gethsemane, there in Gethsemane, to get him to avoid the cross. Jesus resisted, though, so faithfully. He exhausted every temptation. He overpowered temptation itself, driving sin from him, rendering sin powerless, bringing temptations and sins to their end.
Remember last week, I think, when we were talking about the mortification of sin, and we were talking about what it is to mortify any sin. John Owen had that helpful explanation of what it means to mortify or kill any sin. It’s basically to to render it lifeless, so it exerts no power over you.
That’s what Jesus did with temptation, and he kept sin at bay and basically dried it up, caused it to wither, die. That is the ultimate mortification of sin, is what Jesus did, never having to mortify it from within himself, but he mortified it from without himself, never giving in.
In his love for God, he stood fast, he remained loyal, he accomplished the father’s will. And in his love for us, Jesus willingly, eagerly faced temptation for our sake and for the sake of testing, to prove his qualification to serve as our great high priest.
He qualified himself to die for us. I mean, all that he endured, all that pain, all that suffering, all that testing, forty days the with the devil himself in the wilderness, all the people he had to deal with and, and he held fast so that he could die for us.
I mean, he wasn’t looking for some crown at the end, say, hey, good job, attaboy. Here’s a, you know, here’s a gold star. It was so that he could die. He qualified himself to be the sacrifice. He was faithful to qualify as our atoning sacrifice.
Now did Moses do that? Obviously not. Has any hero of yours done that? Past, present, has any hero done that? Has any hero of yours exercised a perfect faithfulness in this regard? No. Even for his own sake, he hasn’t exercised a kind of faithfulness, let alone for your sake. Never been faithful to die for you. And even if he did die for you, that would be an affront to the death of Christ.
So let the thoughts settle into your heart, and let your soul be led into a quiet refuge of rest, to reflect on this, that what Jesus did in the time of his humiliation, in the time of his flesh, in his first advent, it was to be faithful to secure the right to die for you and to die for me so that he might serve his God, his father, and serve you as well and serve you forever. Think about that. His reward is to keep on serving you. His eternal joy is an eternal service. So what about you and me? Do we think like that?
What’s the pastor’s point in bringing this up to his congregation? It’s to keep them from leaving, from being fickle. It’s to keep them from returning to their synagogues that are there to honor Moses and ignore Christ and failing to see who Moses was pointing to the whole time. He wanted them to stay put in honor Christ. “Moses was faithful in all God’s house,” yes, but Jesus is most faithful, okay?
Number two, point number two, and it’s a quick one: Jesus is most honorable. Jesus is most honorable. It says in verse 3, “For he has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses.”
And let me just make a comment on that. “He has been counted worthy.” Do you hear the passive voice, there? It’s another one of those divine passives where God himself is the unstated subject in that verb. Who is counting Jesus worthy of more glory than Moses? The Father is. God is the one who regards him this way, who counts him as worthy of more glory. Just keep that in mind.
when Jesus came, we saw what faithfulness really looked like, didn’t we? Perfect faithfulness without any flaw.” Travis Allen
There’s a lot of passive voice going on in our life, and there is a God who is hidden but watching, always present, always watching your life, always caring for you. And he is the one who you want to stand before: faithful. He’s the one who is actually looking at your life.
“He’s been counted worthy of more glory than Moses in so much as the builder of the house has more honor than the house.” It’s a pretty straightforward argument, isn’t it?
When you see a beautiful home, and should you be able to afford that home, you do not run out to find the name of the framer who swung the hammer, right? You don’t go out to find the dry-waller who put on the sheetrock, the painter who puts on the paint. You want the name of the builder. Who did that? Who do I talk to to get one of those built for me?
If you see a great work of art, you’re not interested in the name of the guy who mixed the paint or the guy who kind of wove together and produced the canvas that’s painted on. You want the name of the artist, and you actually want the name of the artist inscribed on the paint, on the artwork itself. You don’t want the guy who carried the frame and the canvas to write his name on that. That ruins it, right, even though he did legitimate work.
When you eat a fantastic meal, you’re not eager to meet the dishwasher, the busboy. You’re not giving high praise to the one who served you the food. It’s the chef. The chef whose culinary talents and his skillful creativity, his aesthetic sense, has resulted in what was plated and put before you for you to savor and relish and to enjoy.
So Moses is a laborer. Yes, he’s a faithful one at that, and he is superlatively gifted and significantly faithful. But it is the name, Jesus Christ, that God has written on the business cards.
Same with the house. It’s the product of the designer, the architect, he who conceived the idea, that came up the concept, envisioned the creation, thought up the project to begin with, funded it, got it going, hired all the people, and then oversaw the project.
So the house itself is bringing glory to the builder or bringing glory to God. “For every house,” as he goes on in verse 4, “every house is built by someone.” This is just an axiomatic statement. “Every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.”
I love that axiom, that proverbial statement, because I love how it humbles human pride. Whatever men build, produce, accomplish, whatever degrees they earn, whatever jobs they get, whatever money they earn, whatever glory goes to them, their skill, their wherewithal, opportunities to build and to do, do men give God the glory for all that they do, or do they take a little credit for themselves?
Moses sure gave glory to God. For any of his faults, Moses was one who gave all glory to God. If you’re back in the Old Testament, you can stay there and kind of find your way to Numbers chapter 12. That’ll be our next text that we want to review.
But the pastor says in Hebrews 3:5, he says, “MOSES WAS FAITHFUL IN ALL HIS HOUSE AS A SERVANT,” a servant, “for a testimony of those things which are to be spoken later. But Christ was faithful as a Son over His house.”
So there’s the builder, and his name is on the sign; but Christ is the son of the builder. It’s God’s house, God’s name, but the son is taking over the business. The son’s name is on the sign, but Moses, still, “FAITHFUL IN ALL HIS HOUSE AS A SERVANT.”
That quotation comes from Numbers chapter 12, verse 7. And I want you to back up to chapter 12, verse 1, start at the beginning of this because I want you to see how God honors Moses, here. And he does give honor to Moses as a faithful servant in his house.
It says in chapter 12, verse 1, Numbers, “Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman,” that’s a woman from Ethiopia, “whom he had taken as a wife (for he had taken a Cushite woman).” This is probably after the death of his first wife, Zipporah. But here’s a Cushite woman that he marries.
And the complaint that comes about this Cushite woman, this Ethiopian woman, it is not racial, despite what other commentators or pastors want you to believe. This is not about skin color. It’s not about culture.
The charge, ostensibly, here, is it to accuse Moses of wavering in his judgment by taking for himself a non-Abrahamic wife. What are you doing going outside the tribe? This is about Jewish nationalism, right? This is about Jewish nationalism. You stick with our people, Moses.
Yeah, he was permitted to, even in the law that was written, he was permitted to marry outside of Israel and bring her in, and then she becomes part of Israel.
But the charge, here, is really not the issue. That charge is just a pretense for a deeper charge, a deeper, and this goes back to what we said even this morning, it’s an envy issue. Envy is the issue.
And the real issue comes out in the second verse, “And Miriam and Aaron, they spoke against Moses,” verse 1. Miriam’s out in front. She seems to be leading this, and it says in verse 2, “They said,” so brother and sister, there, “they said, ‘Has Yahweh indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well?’ and Yahweh heard it.”
Look at this verse: “{Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.)” If I ever write an autobiography, I’m never putting anything like that in there, right?
But Moses did, and it took his meekness to submit to the Spirit who wanted him to write what he actually is. And it’s not that Moses did this against his will. He agrees with the statement. That takes great humility to admit, to acknowledge. Don’t you get any ideas. That’s not us; it’s Moses.
But “(the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.) And suddenly Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron and to Miriam, ‘You three come out to the tent of meeting.’” Rut row.
“So the three of them came out,” and “then Yahweh came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent, and He called Aaron and Miriam. And then both came forward, and He said, ‘Hear now my words: If there is a prophet among you, I, Yahweh, shall make myself known to him in a vision. I shall speak with him in a dream.
“‘Not so, with My servant Moses, He is faithful in all My household: With him I speak mouth to mouth, indeed clearly, not in riddles, and he beholds the form of Yahweh. Why then were you not afraid to speak against Moses, My servant?’” Ooh.
The text goes on to describe the accompanying judgment of Miriam’s rebellion as well as Aaron, who followed his older sister. It is one thing to have to deal with the grumbling of a hard-hearted, stiff-necked, rebellious people, but when that betrayal comes from family, a knife pierces the heart.
Moses not only stayed faithful in that challenge, but he went further to plead on her behalf. In verse 12, when God struck her with leprosy, he says, “‘O God, heal her.’” He wasn’t vindictive. He says, “‘Heal her, I pray!’” Just demonstrated what verse 3 says.
So the meekness that Moses showed and the humility characterizing his responses to these rebellious insidious charges, the faithfulness that he demonstrated, especially considering the significance of the provocation, the patterns of Moses’ faithfulness, were the setting for his entire prophetic ministry.
And so the pastor says in Hebrews 3:5, if I go back there, that his prophetic role is the main point, to set him up in his character and his meekness and what he went through and how he was tested, it was all to produce his prophetic role in ministry.
“He is faithful as a servant” who attended the ministry of all God’s house, and then it says this in verse 5, “for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later.” So the law, that condemned people, and the law in condemning people then drove them to Christ the Savior.
This pastor is saying, he’s making his point every way he can. He is jumping up and down for emphasis. He’s trying to say to people, stop looking to Moses, a mere man. Stop regarding men. His ministry, the ministry of all true servants of God has the sole purpose of pointing you to Jesus Christ.
It’s Paul who asked the Corinthians, and he asked them rhetorically, he just lets the question indict them, he says, “What then is Apollos? What’s Paul? Servants through whom you believed.” And then he adds, “But it’s the Lord who gave to each one.” It’s the Lord who gives. Each servant has a role. Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered; it’s God who gives the increase.” It’s all according to God’s will.
So since Jesus, here, is more faithful, more honorable than the most faithful and the most honorable of men, and to the Hebrew mind this is indisputably Moses, no other, well, then, the pastor drives his people in verse 6 to an inescapable conclusion. He says, “Christ was faithful as a son over his house, whose house we are if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope.”
This confidence that the pastor speaks of, of which every pastor wants for his people, it’s a confidence before God. It’s not a confidence and a swagger you carry before one another or people. It’s a confidence before God.
And it’s not a shallow thing, but something very, very deep. It’s not a matter of a flimsy profession, a few cliché Christian phrases. It’s something based in theology, based in doctrine, based in the finished work of Jesus Christ, to consider carefully how comprehensively faithful Christ is.
When you know that, when you own that, when it settles your heart, that gives you a confidence that cannot be shaken before God. And in this settled assurance, the bold confidence before God because of who Christ is and what Christ has accomplished, that is an irreversible state of freedom.
It’s the reason for an irrepressible joy, for a heart of profound gratitude that brings you unshakeable peace, a deep and abiding contentment, a perfect satisfaction, and an exuberant expectation and hope of life eternal.
So in simpler terms, as the pastor puts it, he talks about holding fast our confidence in the faithfulness of the Son. And this is the boast of our hope. It’s the boast of our hope. It’s that which we take pride in. It’s what we boast about.
In other words, it’s because of what Christ has accomplished and because of his faithfulness that our faith is strengthened. For “faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” he says later, and it’s the assurance of the, “the conviction of things not seen.”
And this kind of hope is an anchor for the soul, driven down into the unshakable, immutable character of God. That anchor isn’t going anywhere. It keeps us securely fastened, held strong, held fast, held immovable. It keeps us loyal, keeps us faithful in life and ministry, just as Moses in his life, or we could say even better, as Jesus was faithful in his life.
And so it is that the life of Christ is working in us, his life, his Spirit, his Word, showing us that we truly belong to him, that is as he said it in verse 6, “whose house we are.’ We are that entity. We are the ones that God is building.
And Paul, I should say God through Paul, made a similar point to the Corinthians. And again, this comes out of the third chapter, been drawing kind of heavily from 1 Corinthians chapter 3.
In verses 6 through 9, Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. And so then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but it is God who causes the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers, and you are God’s field and you are God’s building,” you could say, his house.
Going down to later in the chapter at the end he says, “So then let no one boast in men, for all things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come. All things belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.” You could chuck in that list Moses, too. He belongs to you. Colossians 3:11, “Christ is all and He is in all.”
So if we put our hope in men, even good and godly men, even very faithful men, we are setting ourselves up for wavering and faltering and not holding fast, just as these Hebrew Christians were doing in this church in Rome.
They were looking to Moses. They were looking to family and friends and everybody who’s criticizing, everybody who’s encouraging them and controlling them and trying to influence them: Leave that Christian thing! That’s headed nowhere good. It’s heading for trouble with Rome. It’s heading for trouble with the Jews. Come back! Come back to your synagogue!
If you put your hope in men, you set yourself up for faltering and not holding fast. But if you put your trust in Jesus Christ, he will keep us faithful to the end, because he is most faithful and he is most honorable, and he will keep you that way, too. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for this short time we’ve had in the book of Hebrews. We thank you for what that congregation had to go through, and how it had to be tested, and how that has shown up in the pages of Scripture by your design and by your good providence and your decree for our benefit, our encouragement and enrichment, so that we can deepen our conviction and so that we can hold fast to our hope and boast in it.
We pray that our only boast would be in you, in the gospel, in Christ himself, and that you would keep us with our eyes fixed on him. We love you, Father, and thank you in his name. Amen.