Hebrews 3:1-6

Jesus Greater Than Moses

 1 Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. 2 He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. 3 Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. 4 For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. 5 “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,”[a] bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. 6 But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.

Dig Deeper

Last year my wife and I hosted 19 boys between the ages of 9 and 18 at our house for an entire week.  It started out to be just a few of our boy’s friends for a good focused spiritual week that would prepare the boys for their big Midwest Spiritual pre-teen and teen Camps.  As we started to put the idea together for the week and really think about who would need to be invited, we realized that it would be nearly 20 boys.  So we decided to host what we called a “spiritual and physical boot camp.”  It really was an enjoyable week as we pushed the boys to their physical limits and challenged them spiritually in many different ways.  On one of the days, after our early morning devotional, we made our way to a National Park called “High Cliff” not too far from here.  The physical challenge for the day was going to be to run about 1 ½ miles down an off road trail through the woods to a specific part of the cliff.  There was a bench placed there strategically at the bottom of of a rather arduous path that went up at a fairly good angle and stretched for well over 1/3 mile.  Part of the challenge was not just to run to the bench but once they got there, they would be running up and back down the hill six times.  I told the older boys to run ahead to that bench where they could begin while I stayed back at a slower pace with the younger boys.  The boys raced ahead full of spit and vinegar and ready to tackle the physical test.  As I got within eyesight of the bench, however, I realized that most of the boys had started to make their way up the path but one of them had put on some head phones and was bopping along to his music.  He must have gotten so into his music that he stopped paying attention to what path he was supposed to be on and continued to run straight past the bench onto a much rougher and less cut-out trail without noticing.  I realized that I was going to have to run after him to catch him and turn him back but he was so far ahead of me and couldn’t hear me yelling because of the headphones.  It was close to a ½ mile down the path before I caught up to him and turned him around.  He had never quit running, that wasn’t his problem.  His problem was that he took his concentration off of the right path and started down the wrong one without noticing.

That was the primary concern for the author of Hebrews as he thought about those that he was addressing with this incredible lesson that we know as the letter to the Hebrews.  It wasn’t that they were going to just give up and quit running intentionally.  The danger was that they were not remaining vigilant.  They had lost focus and were in real peril of running off of the path that Jesus had cut for his people.  The previous section brought to bear the image of Jesus pioneering a path that had never been cut before so that his followers could safely go down that same path but that didn’t mean that the path wasn’t difficult.  It was, and it’s easy to lose focus on such an arduous journey.  To remain faithful to the trail that Jesus had blazed for them meant to keep alert and not to slowly drift away in their heart because before they knew it, they would look up and find that they had left the true trail and gone onto another path that was well off course.

That’s why this section starts with the word “therefore,” connecting it to the previous material about Jesus being the “pioneer.”  Jesus had pioneered a path and they were in danger of leaving that path, therefore, they had to be shaken awake.  The remedy for this situation is clear, says Hebrews.  It is to “fix your thoughts” on Jesus.  This is a pretty good rendering of a word that can be simply translated as “consider” but carries the meaning of truly and thoughtfully thinking about something until the full brunt of its meaning and significance comes to bear.  That’s what the Hebrew’s audience needed to do.  They needed to carefully and thoughtfully consider Jesus, who he is, what he has done for us, and the path down which he has beckoned us to follow him.

The clear call for all Christians is to understand who Jesus is, says Hebrews, in another of his practical interjected exhortations, before returning back to the teaching elements of his lesson.  We must acknowledge Christ as our apostle and high priest.  Applying the term “apostle” to Jesus seems a little odd and, indeed, this is the only place in the New Testament that does so.  But the author isn’t applying the specific office of apostle to Jesus, rather he is clearly using the term in the sense of its specific meaning of “one who is sent.”  Jesus was sent on a mission on our behalf to open up the life of the new creation, something that he was uniquely designed to do.  He is also our high priest, meaning the one who mediates between us and the Father on our behalf.  Hebrews will spend good portions of the rest of his letter elucidating on the meaning and significance of Christ being our high priest so the idea here serves as an introduction for a thought that he will more fully develop.

While fixing our thoughts on who Jesus is, it is important, Hebrews reminds us to also keep our thoughts focused on what exactly our apostle and high priest came to do.  He came to cut a path, a life, that was simply not accessible before.  He was the only one worthy of opening the scroll of the new covenant life, to borrow the language of Revelation 5.  Through Christ the life of the age to come, of God’s restored new creation, came bursting forth and became available to those who respond to Christ in obedient faith.  This is the heavenly calling.  We must be clear what our author means by “heavenly calling” lest we miss that turn and start down a deer trail.  He was not saying that the point of remaining faithful to Christ is that one day we can die and go to heaven, although there is a great deal of truth in that.  The heavenly calling was the way of life that those in Christ were called to live.  It was the radical life of the new creation laid out by Jesus most directly in Matthew 5-7.  His point was that Christianity was not just about hanging on for dear life and hoping to make it to heaven in the end.  It is about staying faithful to the path that Jesus cut and living that radical new life, the heavenly calling, here and now.  That’s what the Hebrews were growing weary in and that is what they needed to be reminded of and remain faithful to.  Christ had called them to a new and challenging way of living that would cause much suffering and sacrifice in the present age, but if they remained focused on the importance and purpose of that path they would not drift off of it.

With that important reminder and exhortation laid out, the author is ready to move onto the next logical step in his argument, namely that Jesus is greater than Moses.  This might seem like an odd progression to us but it would have made perfect sense to first century Jews who typically would have thought of Moses as even greater and more important than angels, and the greatest man who ever lived.  Thus, the progression in Hebrews so far is that Jesus is greater than the prophets, greater than angels, and even greater than Moses.  This would have been a touchy area in which he needed to tread carefully lest the impression be given that he was denigrating Moses or not respecting him and causing offense.  His carefully worded point then, in summary is that Moses was great, but Jesus is even greater.

Moses was certainly a faithful servant in God’s house, there was no arguing that point.  Moses was faithful and accomplished all that the Lord had set out for him to do.  He wasn’t an irrelevant part of the past by any means.  But as great as he was, Jesus surpassed and was superior to Moses.  This would have been something that the Christians in Rome would probably not have argued with but they needed reminding of.  If Moses was considered by Jews to be the greatest and most important human to ever live, and Jesus was ever greater than him, then why on earth would they stop following Jesus to return to the Law of Moses.  Again, it was not that Moses and the Law were bad and Jesus was good; it was that Jesus was the complete reality to which Moses and the Law could only look to.  In other words, Moses was to Jesus as a picture is to the real thing.

There are both similarities and contrasts between Moses and Jesus that Hebrews describes.  As for similarities, they were both appointed by God, they were both faithful to their role, and they both had a role in God’s house.  The similarities are impressive, but the contrasting qualities are more striking and important.  Moses was an important part of the house, but the Messiah was the architect and builder’  Moses knew God but the Messiah is God; and finally, Moses was a servant in the house, but the Messiah is the Son over the house.

The obvious thread that ties this section together throughout is the idea of God’s house.  Our first temptation might be to think of the Temple or an actual structure here, but that would be to miss the point.  “House” here refers to God’s household, his spiritual family.  God’s promise to Abraham was always that he would solve the problem of sin in the world through a family that could trace its lineage to David.   Moses played an important role in the process of bringing that house about as a faithful servant.  But the family itself was the Messiah.  He was the designer, the builder, and the fulfillment of that family.  This is why the stakes are so high in remaining faithful to the Messiah.  Following Jesus is not merely being part of just another religion.  It is to be part of God’s family through the Messiah. 

And yet the stakes are even higher than just coming to the Messiah and being part of God’s family.  There is a conditional aspect that must be focused on.  “We are his house,” says Hebrews, “If indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.”  The author will wait until chapter 12 to fully lay out what our confidence and hope are as members of God’s family, but the point here is clear.  There is nothing greater than being part of God’s house and the only doorway into that house is the Messiah.  To lose sight of that, Hebrews makes painfully clear, would mean to not just take another path, but would mean to walk away from God’s family altogether.  And that would be a real tragedy and something worthy of fixing our thoughts upon.

  

Devotional Thought

When is the last time that you really took some significant time to simply fix your thoughts on Jesus and meaning and ramifications of him being the Lord and King of your life?  Take some time to consider whether you really are following down the path of love, suffering, self-sacrifice, giving, and servanthood that Jesus cut for his kingdom people.