In this Bible study podcast, Andy Davis goes line by line through Hebrews 3:1-6. The author urges his readers to realize that even faithful Moses was only a servant in God’s house, but Jesus Christ is over all of God’s house as the faithful Son. There is an infinite gap in the glory due to Moses, and the glory due to Jesus Christ.
The author urges his readers to realize that even faithful Moses was only a servant in God’s house, but Jesus Christ is over all of God’s house as the faithful Son. There is an infinite gap in the glory due to Moses, and the glory due to Jesus Christ.
– PODCAST TRANSCRIPT –
Joel
Hi. Welcome to the Two Journeys podcast. This is episode five in Hebrews Bible Study Questions, the lesson is: Jesus is Greater Than Moses, and we’re looking at Hebrews 3:1-6. Andy, this is the next development in the chapter where the author, he had previously argued that Jesus was greater than the angels. Now he argues that Jesus is greater than Moses. Can you give us some introductory insights before we go through verse by verse?
Andy
I think for us to keep in mind what the author is doing here, who he’s writing to, and then for us as 21st century Christians, to see how that gives us strength and energy to be glorifying to God in the way that we live our lives. So the author is writing- we don’t know who the author is, the author is writing to first century Jewish people who had made a profession of faith in Christ, but who were under overwhelming pressure from their Jewish neighbors and authorities; maybe they would be in the synagogue or other perhaps customers in the Jewish society who were turning them out and persecuting them and perhaps even arresting them and threatening worse if they continued to believe in Jesus. So they’re under overwhelming pressure to turn back to old covenant Judaism. So the author has basically three main steps in this book. He’s trying to show the superiority of Jesus as the mediator of a new covenant. So Jesus is a superior mediator who then secondly brings us a superior covenant, the new covenant superior to the old covenant, resulting thirdly in a superior life, the life of faith. And so we’re in the midst of that first main movement, which is showing the superiority of Jesus Christ. And for him to show the superiority of Christ to Moses absolutely will lead into his next point, which is the superiority of the new covenant, which Jesus is the mediator of to the old covenant, which Moses was the mediator of.
“Jesus is a superior mediator who then secondly brings us a superior covenant, the new covenant superior to the old covenant, resulting thirdly in a superior life, the life of faith.”
Joel
Well, for the sake of our audience, I’m going to read Hebrews 3:1-6,
“Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in heavenly calling consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses- as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over all God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”
So I want to start with the first word of this chapter, “Therefore,” how does this section connect to the previous section?
Andy
Okay. So the author to Hebrews has been saying why Jesus took on a human body. And the argument against worshiping Christ as the Son of God is that he was an ordinary human being. But the author shows why he took on flesh and blood. He had to be made like his brothers in every way. And so the fact that he took on a human body was essential to our salvation. By taking on a human body, he was able to make propitiation for our sins. He was able to shed his blood in our place and be an atoning sacrifice to take away God’s wrath for our sins. And so he’s saying in this way, he had to be conformed to us, he had to be made human or else he could not be our substitute. And in this way, he is able to be a merciful and faithful high priest in that he both makes propitiation for us and helps us, through intercession, helps us when we are tempted. And so then he just continues on into this section, “Therefore,” etc.
Joel
Now, what are these words: “Holy brothers” and “Heavenly calling”? What does this teach us about the Christian life?
Andy
Well, the brothers and sisters, the believers in Christ, are holy. In other words, they have been set apart unto God as his special possession, which language that Jewish people would’ve been familiar with at Mount Sinai when God was giving the old Testament, the 10 Commandments through his mediator Moses, he said, “Although the whole world is mine, you’ll be for me a treasured possession. You’ll be my own.”(Paraphrase of Exodus 19:5-6) A nation of priests, he called them.
And so in that sense, they were holy. They were set apart unto God. And so we as followers of Christ are holy. We are set apart as God’s own possession. Not only that, but we share a heavenly calling. In other words, we have a calling to go to heaven and we’re on route to heaven. We’re on, as Jesus said, “The narrow road that leads to eternal life.”(Paraphrase of Matthew 7:14) And so our calling is the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, Paul calls it in Philippians, to spend eternity with God in heaven. We have a heavenly calling. So he’s just saying, I want to address you now, believers in Christ. You are holy and you have a heavenly calling. So these are very exalted titles of Christians.
Joel
Now he tells them to consider Jesus. These believers had already come to faith in Christ, so they know Jesus. But what specifically is he telling them when he says, “Consider Jesus?” What is he trying to do to them?
Andy
He wants to focus their minds. He wants to get them to weigh and seriously deal with and meditate on the person and work of Jesus Christ. He wants them to focus on Christ, not on their temptations or trials, not on what they might lose if they’re kicked out of the synagogue, not what might happen if they’re arrested and they lose all their possessions or even if they’re killed. They should focus or fix their full attention on Jesus. And as they do that, they’re able to deal with all of these trials in a better way. It’s the very thing he was saying at the beginning of the last chapter when he says, “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard.”(Hebrews 2:1) So what we think about inevitably affects how we live. And so he wants them to meditate richly and fully on Jesus.
Joel
Now it says he’s the high priest of our confession. And you already mentioned that in a mediatory role that Jesus played as the propitiatory sacrifice. What’s the significance of the words, “Of our confession?”
Andy
Well, our confession is he’s the one that we confess. He’s the one that we are professing by our words, “If we confess with our mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved.”(Paraphrase of Romans 10:9.) So he is the centerpiece of our confession of our Christian faith. So we are testifying that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and our savior. So that’s what our confession means. But the author calls Jesus here our apostle and high priest of our confession. These are two different offices. The word apostle means, “sent one,” somebody sent with a mission. Jesus is really the ultimate apostle. He’s the ultimate missionary. He was sent from heaven to earth, from the Father to us. “He was sent into the world to do the Father’s will, and that is to save all that the Father had given him.”(Paraphrase of John 6:38-39) So he was sent on mission by God the Father; he is our apostle and he is also the high priest. And we’re going to talk a lot more about Jesus’s priestly ministry. But the priest, what he does is he offers sacrifices and offers prayers and intercessions and offers teachings, those three things in particular. And so that’s what priests did for the Jewish people. Jesus is our high priest and even our great high priest. He is greater than any of the high priests in the order of Aaron as we’ll talk about later. So he gave his own blood and body as a sacrifice to God to atone for our sins. So priests do that. They offer sacrifices. And he also intercedes for the people as we’ll learn in Hebrews 7:25, “He always lives to intercede for them.” So he is our high priest and he also is our teacher. He is the one who taught us the gospel. So in this way, he is a perfect high priest, the high priest of our Christian faith.
Joel
So the next thing it says about Jesus is that he- “Was faithful to him who appointed him.”(Hebrews 3:2) So let’s talk about just the faithfulness of Jesus Christ in all that he did in his life in ministry.
Andy
Yeah, this is incredible and a great and rich meditation. Some of the greatest teaching on this is in the gospel of John. Jesus said, “I always do what pleases him. I’ve come down from heaven not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me.”(Paraphrase of John 6:37) And he said, “I speak nothing except what the Father taught me to say.”(Paraphrase of John 12:49) And even his own death, he said, “I have the authority to lay down my life,” and his own resurrection, “I have the authority to take it up. But all of this I did by obedience to the command of God.”(Paraphrase of John 10:18) Jesus is perfectly faithful to God, and his faithfulness is his righteousness because he completely, consistently obeyed the commands of God the Father, the old covenant laws and commandments, but also the specialized commandments the Father had given him as our Savior. He was faithful in every respect, never violated a single command that God gave to a Jewish man. And more than that, he was willing to lay down his life as a sacrifice. And that command also he received from the Father, faithful to everything. And so the faithfulness of Jesus is overwhelming. And so again, the author is pleading with these Jewish professors of faith in Christ to not turn their back on Jesus. Look who he is. He was perfectly faithful to the one who appointed him. And the one who appointed him is God the Father. Later in Hebrews 5:4, he’s going to say, “No one takes the honor of being a priest on himself; he must be called by God.” And so Jesus was appointed by God the Father to this role, and he was faithful, Jesus was, to the Father.
Joel
Now next we begin the comparison of Jesus being compared with Moses. And it says Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses. So maybe for those who aren’t familiar with Judaism, why would this have been really a shocking statement to many Jews? In fact, a stumbling block to some Jews to hear that Jesus is actually worthy of more glory than Moses?
Andy
Well, this is an absolute clincher in the argument. I mean, Moses was, other than Abraham, the central figure in Judaism. Abraham was the father of the nation. But Moses was the deliverer from bondage in Egypt. He was the miracle worker. He was the one that gave them the 10 Commandments, who mediated that on Mount Sinai. He really gave them a national identity. They were just slaves in Egypt.
They remembered Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But that heritage seemed to be doing them no good. But it was Moses who acted really like a savior who came and brought them out of Egypt, who did signs and wonders and who led them through the Red Sea and fed them with manna. So again and again, the Jews would ask Jesus, “Are you greater than Moses? Moses gave us manna. What can you give us?” etc. There’s always this comparison. So there is this sense of the greatness of Moses.
Now, the author here is honoring and respecting Moses. He says Moses was faithful as a servant in God’s house. So he was a faithful man. Jesus was also faithful. But here he’s saying that Jesus is worthy of greater honor or greater glory than Moses. And that’s an amazing statement. It’s the kind of thing that would immediately cause Jews to recoil in horror or to say it’s blasphemous because of the reverence with which the Jews held Moses.
Joel
Now, in explaining this, he talks about the building of a house. He says, “As much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself.”(Hebrews 3:3) So it sounds like in this, Jesus is the builder, right? I guess first, what is the house?
Andy
Well, the author, thankfully, even in this section, doesn’t leave us to wonder the answer to that question. He says, “We are his house if we hold on to our faith.”(Paraphrase of Hebrews 3:6) So that’s in verse six. So the house is a metaphor. It’s an architectural metaphor. Paul does the same thing in the book of Ephesians. There he uses the language of a temple. In 1 Corinthians 3, he talks about building a building on a foundation, building with good materials like gold, silver, costly stone, versus wood, hay and straw. So we get that architectural imagery going. We also have both in Ephesians 4 and in 1 Corinthians 12, a physical or biological image of a body. So the church, the followers of Christ are like a body. Jesus is the head. We are the members of the body. But here we have an architectural image. And so we are his house. Also, we have maybe perhaps not just an architectural image because it does use the word builder, but also somewhat of a family image that you could think of in terms of a household like a family, a household. And so he’s going to compare Moses to Jesus concerning this house. So Jesus is worthy of a greater glory than Moses because he built the house. Moses is just a servant in that house.
Joel
Yeah. So can you tease that out as to how was Moses a servant in the house? And then just how does that help us think about who we are in God’s house?
Andy
Amen. I think that the powerful image here, Jesus is the builder of the house and we the people are the house. So Jesus is the builder of us, and this is true in every respect. Again, going back to John’s gospel, John 1, just at the beginning, it says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him [Jesus, the Word] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”(John 1:1-3) So that’s that construction image. We were constructed. We were built by the power of God. So God the Father is the creator, but he did all of his creating, all of his building, through Jesus, just as the author of Hebrews said at the beginning, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”(Hebrews 1:3) And so Jesus is the creator along with the Father and sustainer of everything, and we’re included in everything. We are physical creations and spiritual creations. And Jesus built us. He’s the builder. He was the builder of Moses. He knit Moses together in his mother’s womb. He held Moses’s body together every day of his life. He orchestrated the events of Moses life. Jesus built Moses, and Jesus built every Jewish man, woman, and child as the creator. And so the honor and glory of the house goes to the builder. He made it beautiful and majestic and glorious.
“Jesus is the creator along with the Father and sustainer of everything, and we’re included in everything. We are physical creations and spiritual creations. And Jesus built us. He’s the builder.”
And we’re part of it. Peter uses the image of living stones in it. We are living stones in the house of God. Now, Moses is called faithful as a servant in that house. Now, it’s ironic because he is also a living stone in that house. So he is both part of the house, but also a servant in it. So you asked, “What does that say to us as Christians?” Well, through our spiritual gifts, through our various ministries, we can be like Moses. We can be servants in the house of God. But the house is the people of God, and Jesus is the builder. And Jesus deserves far greater honor and glory than any servant ever would in the house.
Joel
Yeah. It reminds me of what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4, where he says, “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ.”(1 Corinthians 4:1) Obviously, he’s an apostle, but still, I guess that we should say that about ourselves too.
Andy
Absolutely. And again, Jesus himself said it in Luke 17. He said, “Suppose one of you had a servant laboring out in the field, and when he came in, would he say, ‘Why don’t you sit down? You’ve worked hard out in the field and I’ll get you dinner.’ No. He’d say, ‘You get yourself ready and you serve me and make my dinner. After that you may eat.’ Would he thank the servant for doing what he was told to do out in the field? So you also, when you’ve done everything you were commanded to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants. We have only done our duty.'”(Paraphrase of Luke 17:7-10) Moses would say that. And now that Moses is up in glory, Moses is in heaven and sees Jesus’s glory all the time, he would say a 100% amen to the author’s argument here. Jesus deserves more glory than Moses, and he will get that glory. He has the perfect glory. Also, I want to think about the Mount of Transfiguration where Jesus is up there and his face was transformed and it became radiant like the sunshine. And Moses and Elijah were there talking with Jesus. And Peter, James, and John saw that, and they were trembling and terrified. And then a bright cloud came. And you remember how Peter said, “It’s good to be here. We’ll make a booth for you and for Moses and Elijah.” And he didn’t know what he was saying. And then the voice came from the cloud; from God the Father saying, “This is my Son whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”(Paraphrase of Matthew 17:4-5) When they looked up, they could only see Jesus. What happened to Moses?
Joel
Gone.
Andy
Gone. What happened to Elijah? Gone. Moses is the law. Elijah is the prophets, but they testify to Jesus. And when that job is done, they’re done. But Jesus has this lasting abiding glory.
Joel
Okay, so you use that word testify. That’s actually the next phrase in verse five. He says, “Moses was faithful as a servant to testify to the things that were to be spoken later.”(Hebrews 3:5) So what in Moses’ ministry was a ministry of testimony to Christ?
Andy
Well, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. So that’s the clearest testimony Moses ever gave. That’s Moses’s lasting ministry. We weren’t there. We didn’t eat the manna. We didn’t walk through the Red Sea. Frankly, we wouldn’t have known anything about it if he hadn’t written the book of Exodus. And so in writing Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, that’s his lasting testimony. And Jesus said in John 5, “Moses testified about me, for he wrote about me.”(Paraphrase of John 5:46) Well, we believe that Moses’s encounter with Jesus began really at the burning bush when the angel of the Lord spoke to Moses. And Moses was attracted to this bush and came over and he was told by the angel of the Lord speaking out of the bush, “Do not come any closer. And take off your sandals for the ground in which you’re standing is holy ground.” And he said, “Who are you?” And he said, “I am.”(Paraphrase of Exodus 3:5-6) So this is Jesus’ name. That’s what he said in John 8, “Before Abraham was born, I am!”(John 8:58) So Moses saw the glory of Jesus, and it was Jesus’s glory that began him on his mission as the deliverer of the Jews. And then he had ongoing encounters with God, the triune God, but especially with Jesus as the radiant glory of God. And so Moses had a foretaste of the glory of Jesus and testified to it. Also, keep in mind: he set up the animal sacrificial system for the Jewish nation with the Levitical priesthood that we’re going to talk about, with his brother Aaron, the high priest, first high priest. And the Tabernacle was built according to a pattern that Moses had seen. We’ll get into all this. But it was through the man Moses that all of this animal sacrificial system was mediated to the Jews in an organized way, and all of it testified to Jesus. It all pointed ahead to the sacrifice Jesus would give for our sins. So Moses testified to the glory of Jesus.
Joel
That makes total sense. Now, in the last verse, verse six, he says, “But Christ is faithful over all God’s house as a son.”(Hebrews 3:6) So you’ve already mentioned the son, Mount Transfiguration. “This is my Son. Listen to him!”(Paraphrase of Matthew 17:5) And he says, “We are his house…” You’ve talked about that, how we are God’s house, the living stones being built, but then he says, “If indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope,”(Hebrews 3:6) why the word if?
Andy
Well, that really is the spirit of the whole book here. This is a warning epistle. The book of Hebrews is a warning. Don’t drift away. Don’t turn away. Don’t fall away. And don’t under the influence of temptation and sin and fear or allure in the world, turn your back on Jesus. If you don’t do that, if you continue in your faith, you will be saved. So this is essential to our salvation. We can’t just begin the Christian race. We have to throw off every sin and every weight that hinders us and run with endurance right to the end. Jesus said, “He who stands firm to the end will be saved.”(Matthew 24:13) Now, we believe that those who have been called by God, who are elect and chosen in him before the creation of the world, who come to a genuine faith in Christ and are justified by faith in Christ, they will never lose their justification and they will persevere to the end, but they must, they must persevere. So the word “if” like many other “ifs” in the New Testament, stands over us and urges us to keep running this race. We can’t get lazy. The author, he was going to say, we do not want you to become lazy. You need to keep fighting the good fight, finishing the race, keeping the faith. That’s what we have to do. So we are his house if we finish. If we didn’t finish, we never were part of his house. That’s what he’s saying.
“We can’t just begin the Christian race. We have to throw off every sin and every weight that hinders us and run with endurance right to the end. Jesus said, “He who stands firm to the end will be saved.”(Matthew 24:13)”
Joel
What are these three words, the confidence, boasting, and hope? He could have said, “If you continue in the faith,” but he gives these three words, our confidence, our boasting, and our hope. How does that really zero in on how he wants us to hold fast?
Andy
Well, he wants these Hebrew, these Jewish professors of faith in Christ to be absolutely filled with assurance of things hoped for; he is going to say later in this great epistle. He wants them to be buoyant and confident that even if you slay them, that you’re just sending them onto their eternal reward. He wants them to be confident, to not worry about finances, to not worry about their possessions that might be confiscated, to not worry about their freedom or even their physical health or physical lives. He wants them to have a confidence in Christ that is so powerful in evangelism because he knows that is the only way that these Jews who had not yet professed faith in Christ could be woken up from their rebellion and from their sinful death really being dead in their transgressions and sins, to come to Christ. And so he wants them to be bold and confident. There’s that sense of assurance of confidence. The opposite is unbelief really. If you don’t have that confident assurance, then that really is a form of unbelief.
Joel
Do you want to say any final thoughts on verses one through six?
Andy
Well, it’s a magnificent section. What it urges me to do, first and foremost, to just meditate on Christ all the time, think about his greatness, and think about the greatness of Christ when I’m tempted, when I’m tempted to sin. Think about the greatness of Christ when I’m tempted to think about how great my service is. I’m just a servant in God’s house and nowhere near as impactful as Moses. And Jesus is greater than Moses. He’s vastly greater than me.
Now, I want to be faithful as a servant in God’s house. I want to be faithful to do my ministry, but Jesus is the one who deserves glory as the builder of the house. I want to be a servant in the house, but Jesus deserves all glory and praise and honor for my life, for your life, Joe, for all of those who listen to us. For everything we do, Jesus gets the glory.
Joel
Amen. Well, that was episode five in Hebrews 3:1-6. Please join us next time for chapter three verses seven through 11. We’ll talk about this warning, do not harden your hearts. He says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” Thank you for listening, and God bless you all.
The author urges his readers to realize that even faithful Moses was only a servant in God’s house, but Jesus Christ is over all of God’s house as the faithful Son. There is an infinite gap in the glory due to Moses, and the glory due to Jesus Christ.
– PODCAST TRANSCRIPT –
Joel
Hi. Welcome to the Two Journeys podcast. This is episode five in Hebrews Bible Study Questions, the lesson is: Jesus is Greater Than Moses, and we’re looking at Hebrews 3:1-6. Andy, this is the next development in the chapter where the author, he had previously argued that Jesus was greater than the angels. Now he argues that Jesus is greater than Moses. Can you give us some introductory insights before we go through verse by verse?
Andy
I think for us to keep in mind what the author is doing here, who he’s writing to, and then for us as 21st century Christians, to see how that gives us strength and energy to be glorifying to God in the way that we live our lives. So the author is writing- we don’t know who the author is, the author is writing to first century Jewish people who had made a profession of faith in Christ, but who were under overwhelming pressure from their Jewish neighbors and authorities; maybe they would be in the synagogue or other perhaps customers in the Jewish society who were turning them out and persecuting them and perhaps even arresting them and threatening worse if they continued to believe in Jesus. So they’re under overwhelming pressure to turn back to old covenant Judaism. So the author has basically three main steps in this book. He’s trying to show the superiority of Jesus as the mediator of a new covenant. So Jesus is a superior mediator who then secondly brings us a superior covenant, the new covenant superior to the old covenant, resulting thirdly in a superior life, the life of faith. And so we’re in the midst of that first main movement, which is showing the superiority of Jesus Christ. And for him to show the superiority of Christ to Moses absolutely will lead into his next point, which is the superiority of the new covenant, which Jesus is the mediator of to the old covenant, which Moses was the mediator of.
“Jesus is a superior mediator who then secondly brings us a superior covenant, the new covenant superior to the old covenant, resulting thirdly in a superior life, the life of faith.”
Joel
Well, for the sake of our audience, I’m going to read Hebrews 3:1-6,
“Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in heavenly calling consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses- as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over all God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”
So I want to start with the first word of this chapter, “Therefore,” how does this section connect to the previous section?
Andy
Okay. So the author to Hebrews has been saying why Jesus took on a human body. And the argument against worshiping Christ as the Son of God is that he was an ordinary human being. But the author shows why he took on flesh and blood. He had to be made like his brothers in every way. And so the fact that he took on a human body was essential to our salvation. By taking on a human body, he was able to make propitiation for our sins. He was able to shed his blood in our place and be an atoning sacrifice to take away God’s wrath for our sins. And so he’s saying in this way, he had to be conformed to us, he had to be made human or else he could not be our substitute. And in this way, he is able to be a merciful and faithful high priest in that he both makes propitiation for us and helps us, through intercession, helps us when we are tempted. And so then he just continues on into this section, “Therefore,” etc.
Joel
Now, what are these words: “Holy brothers” and “Heavenly calling”? What does this teach us about the Christian life?
Andy
Well, the brothers and sisters, the believers in Christ, are holy. In other words, they have been set apart unto God as his special possession, which language that Jewish people would’ve been familiar with at Mount Sinai when God was giving the old Testament, the 10 Commandments through his mediator Moses, he said, “Although the whole world is mine, you’ll be for me a treasured possession. You’ll be my own.”(Paraphrase of Exodus 19:5-6) A nation of priests, he called them.
And so in that sense, they were holy. They were set apart unto God. And so we as followers of Christ are holy. We are set apart as God’s own possession. Not only that, but we share a heavenly calling. In other words, we have a calling to go to heaven and we’re on route to heaven. We’re on, as Jesus said, “The narrow road that leads to eternal life.”(Paraphrase of Matthew 7:14) And so our calling is the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, Paul calls it in Philippians, to spend eternity with God in heaven. We have a heavenly calling. So he’s just saying, I want to address you now, believers in Christ. You are holy and you have a heavenly calling. So these are very exalted titles of Christians.
Joel
Now he tells them to consider Jesus. These believers had already come to faith in Christ, so they know Jesus. But what specifically is he telling them when he says, “Consider Jesus?” What is he trying to do to them?
Andy
He wants to focus their minds. He wants to get them to weigh and seriously deal with and meditate on the person and work of Jesus Christ. He wants them to focus on Christ, not on their temptations or trials, not on what they might lose if they’re kicked out of the synagogue, not what might happen if they’re arrested and they lose all their possessions or even if they’re killed. They should focus or fix their full attention on Jesus. And as they do that, they’re able to deal with all of these trials in a better way. It’s the very thing he was saying at the beginning of the last chapter when he says, “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard.”(Hebrews 2:1) So what we think about inevitably affects how we live. And so he wants them to meditate richly and fully on Jesus.
Joel
Now it says he’s the high priest of our confession. And you already mentioned that in a mediatory role that Jesus played as the propitiatory sacrifice. What’s the significance of the words, “Of our confession?”
Andy
Well, our confession is he’s the one that we confess. He’s the one that we are professing by our words, “If we confess with our mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved.”(Paraphrase of Romans 10:9.) So he is the centerpiece of our confession of our Christian faith. So we are testifying that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and our savior. So that’s what our confession means. But the author calls Jesus here our apostle and high priest of our confession. These are two different offices. The word apostle means, “sent one,” somebody sent with a mission. Jesus is really the ultimate apostle. He’s the ultimate missionary. He was sent from heaven to earth, from the Father to us. “He was sent into the world to do the Father’s will, and that is to save all that the Father had given him.”(Paraphrase of John 6:38-39) So he was sent on mission by God the Father; he is our apostle and he is also the high priest. And we’re going to talk a lot more about Jesus’s priestly ministry. But the priest, what he does is he offers sacrifices and offers prayers and intercessions and offers teachings, those three things in particular. And so that’s what priests did for the Jewish people. Jesus is our high priest and even our great high priest. He is greater than any of the high priests in the order of Aaron as we’ll talk about later. So he gave his own blood and body as a sacrifice to God to atone for our sins. So priests do that. They offer sacrifices. And he also intercedes for the people as we’ll learn in Hebrews 7:25, “He always lives to intercede for them.” So he is our high priest and he also is our teacher. He is the one who taught us the gospel. So in this way, he is a perfect high priest, the high priest of our Christian faith.
Joel
So the next thing it says about Jesus is that he- “Was faithful to him who appointed him.”(Hebrews 3:2) So let’s talk about just the faithfulness of Jesus Christ in all that he did in his life in ministry.
Andy
Yeah, this is incredible and a great and rich meditation. Some of the greatest teaching on this is in the gospel of John. Jesus said, “I always do what pleases him. I’ve come down from heaven not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me.”(Paraphrase of John 6:37) And he said, “I speak nothing except what the Father taught me to say.”(Paraphrase of John 12:49) And even his own death, he said, “I have the authority to lay down my life,” and his own resurrection, “I have the authority to take it up. But all of this I did by obedience to the command of God.”(Paraphrase of John 10:18) Jesus is perfectly faithful to God, and his faithfulness is his righteousness because he completely, consistently obeyed the commands of God the Father, the old covenant laws and commandments, but also the specialized commandments the Father had given him as our Savior. He was faithful in every respect, never violated a single command that God gave to a Jewish man. And more than that, he was willing to lay down his life as a sacrifice. And that command also he received from the Father, faithful to everything. And so the faithfulness of Jesus is overwhelming. And so again, the author is pleading with these Jewish professors of faith in Christ to not turn their back on Jesus. Look who he is. He was perfectly faithful to the one who appointed him. And the one who appointed him is God the Father. Later in Hebrews 5:4, he’s going to say, “No one takes the honor of being a priest on himself; he must be called by God.” And so Jesus was appointed by God the Father to this role, and he was faithful, Jesus was, to the Father.
Joel
Now next we begin the comparison of Jesus being compared with Moses. And it says Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses. So maybe for those who aren’t familiar with Judaism, why would this have been really a shocking statement to many Jews? In fact, a stumbling block to some Jews to hear that Jesus is actually worthy of more glory than Moses?
Andy
Well, this is an absolute clincher in the argument. I mean, Moses was, other than Abraham, the central figure in Judaism. Abraham was the father of the nation. But Moses was the deliverer from bondage in Egypt. He was the miracle worker. He was the one that gave them the 10 Commandments, who mediated that on Mount Sinai. He really gave them a national identity. They were just slaves in Egypt.
They remembered Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But that heritage seemed to be doing them no good. But it was Moses who acted really like a savior who came and brought them out of Egypt, who did signs and wonders and who led them through the Red Sea and fed them with manna. So again and again, the Jews would ask Jesus, “Are you greater than Moses? Moses gave us manna. What can you give us?” etc. There’s always this comparison. So there is this sense of the greatness of Moses.
Now, the author here is honoring and respecting Moses. He says Moses was faithful as a servant in God’s house. So he was a faithful man. Jesus was also faithful. But here he’s saying that Jesus is worthy of greater honor or greater glory than Moses. And that’s an amazing statement. It’s the kind of thing that would immediately cause Jews to recoil in horror or to say it’s blasphemous because of the reverence with which the Jews held Moses.
Joel
Now, in explaining this, he talks about the building of a house. He says, “As much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself.”(Hebrews 3:3) So it sounds like in this, Jesus is the builder, right? I guess first, what is the house?
Andy
Well, the author, thankfully, even in this section, doesn’t leave us to wonder the answer to that question. He says, “We are his house if we hold on to our faith.”(Paraphrase of Hebrews 3:6) So that’s in verse six. So the house is a metaphor. It’s an architectural metaphor. Paul does the same thing in the book of Ephesians. There he uses the language of a temple. In 1 Corinthians 3, he talks about building a building on a foundation, building with good materials like gold, silver, costly stone, versus wood, hay and straw. So we get that architectural imagery going. We also have both in Ephesians 4 and in 1 Corinthians 12, a physical or biological image of a body. So the church, the followers of Christ are like a body. Jesus is the head. We are the members of the body. But here we have an architectural image. And so we are his house. Also, we have maybe perhaps not just an architectural image because it does use the word builder, but also somewhat of a family image that you could think of in terms of a household like a family, a household. And so he’s going to compare Moses to Jesus concerning this house. So Jesus is worthy of a greater glory than Moses because he built the house. Moses is just a servant in that house.
Joel
Yeah. So can you tease that out as to how was Moses a servant in the house? And then just how does that help us think about who we are in God’s house?
Andy
Amen. I think that the powerful image here, Jesus is the builder of the house and we the people are the house. So Jesus is the builder of us, and this is true in every respect. Again, going back to John’s gospel, John 1, just at the beginning, it says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him [Jesus, the Word] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”(John 1:1-3) So that’s that construction image. We were constructed. We were built by the power of God. So God the Father is the creator, but he did all of his creating, all of his building, through Jesus, just as the author of Hebrews said at the beginning, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”(Hebrews 1:3) And so Jesus is the creator along with the Father and sustainer of everything, and we’re included in everything. We are physical creations and spiritual creations. And Jesus built us. He’s the builder. He was the builder of Moses. He knit Moses together in his mother’s womb. He held Moses’s body together every day of his life. He orchestrated the events of Moses life. Jesus built Moses, and Jesus built every Jewish man, woman, and child as the creator. And so the honor and glory of the house goes to the builder. He made it beautiful and majestic and glorious.
“Jesus is the creator along with the Father and sustainer of everything, and we’re included in everything. We are physical creations and spiritual creations. And Jesus built us. He’s the builder.”
And we’re part of it. Peter uses the image of living stones in it. We are living stones in the house of God. Now, Moses is called faithful as a servant in that house. Now, it’s ironic because he is also a living stone in that house. So he is both part of the house, but also a servant in it. So you asked, “What does that say to us as Christians?” Well, through our spiritual gifts, through our various ministries, we can be like Moses. We can be servants in the house of God. But the house is the people of God, and Jesus is the builder. And Jesus deserves far greater honor and glory than any servant ever would in the house.
Joel
Yeah. It reminds me of what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4, where he says, “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ.”(1 Corinthians 4:1) Obviously, he’s an apostle, but still, I guess that we should say that about ourselves too.
Andy
Absolutely. And again, Jesus himself said it in Luke 17. He said, “Suppose one of you had a servant laboring out in the field, and when he came in, would he say, ‘Why don’t you sit down? You’ve worked hard out in the field and I’ll get you dinner.’ No. He’d say, ‘You get yourself ready and you serve me and make my dinner. After that you may eat.’ Would he thank the servant for doing what he was told to do out in the field? So you also, when you’ve done everything you were commanded to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants. We have only done our duty.'”(Paraphrase of Luke 17:7-10) Moses would say that. And now that Moses is up in glory, Moses is in heaven and sees Jesus’s glory all the time, he would say a 100% amen to the author’s argument here. Jesus deserves more glory than Moses, and he will get that glory. He has the perfect glory. Also, I want to think about the Mount of Transfiguration where Jesus is up there and his face was transformed and it became radiant like the sunshine. And Moses and Elijah were there talking with Jesus. And Peter, James, and John saw that, and they were trembling and terrified. And then a bright cloud came. And you remember how Peter said, “It’s good to be here. We’ll make a booth for you and for Moses and Elijah.” And he didn’t know what he was saying. And then the voice came from the cloud; from God the Father saying, “This is my Son whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”(Paraphrase of Matthew 17:4-5) When they looked up, they could only see Jesus. What happened to Moses?
Joel
Gone.
Andy
Gone. What happened to Elijah? Gone. Moses is the law. Elijah is the prophets, but they testify to Jesus. And when that job is done, they’re done. But Jesus has this lasting abiding glory.
Joel
Okay, so you use that word testify. That’s actually the next phrase in verse five. He says, “Moses was faithful as a servant to testify to the things that were to be spoken later.”(Hebrews 3:5) So what in Moses’ ministry was a ministry of testimony to Christ?
Andy
Well, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. So that’s the clearest testimony Moses ever gave. That’s Moses’s lasting ministry. We weren’t there. We didn’t eat the manna. We didn’t walk through the Red Sea. Frankly, we wouldn’t have known anything about it if he hadn’t written the book of Exodus. And so in writing Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, that’s his lasting testimony. And Jesus said in John 5, “Moses testified about me, for he wrote about me.”(Paraphrase of John 5:46) Well, we believe that Moses’s encounter with Jesus began really at the burning bush when the angel of the Lord spoke to Moses. And Moses was attracted to this bush and came over and he was told by the angel of the Lord speaking out of the bush, “Do not come any closer. And take off your sandals for the ground in which you’re standing is holy ground.” And he said, “Who are you?” And he said, “I am.”(Paraphrase of Exodus 3:5-6) So this is Jesus’ name. That’s what he said in John 8, “Before Abraham was born, I am!”(John 8:58) So Moses saw the glory of Jesus, and it was Jesus’s glory that began him on his mission as the deliverer of the Jews. And then he had ongoing encounters with God, the triune God, but especially with Jesus as the radiant glory of God. And so Moses had a foretaste of the glory of Jesus and testified to it. Also, keep in mind: he set up the animal sacrificial system for the Jewish nation with the Levitical priesthood that we’re going to talk about, with his brother Aaron, the high priest, first high priest. And the Tabernacle was built according to a pattern that Moses had seen. We’ll get into all this. But it was through the man Moses that all of this animal sacrificial system was mediated to the Jews in an organized way, and all of it testified to Jesus. It all pointed ahead to the sacrifice Jesus would give for our sins. So Moses testified to the glory of Jesus.
Joel
That makes total sense. Now, in the last verse, verse six, he says, “But Christ is faithful over all God’s house as a son.”(Hebrews 3:6) So you’ve already mentioned the son, Mount Transfiguration. “This is my Son. Listen to him!”(Paraphrase of Matthew 17:5) And he says, “We are his house…” You’ve talked about that, how we are God’s house, the living stones being built, but then he says, “If indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope,”(Hebrews 3:6) why the word if?
Andy
Well, that really is the spirit of the whole book here. This is a warning epistle. The book of Hebrews is a warning. Don’t drift away. Don’t turn away. Don’t fall away. And don’t under the influence of temptation and sin and fear or allure in the world, turn your back on Jesus. If you don’t do that, if you continue in your faith, you will be saved. So this is essential to our salvation. We can’t just begin the Christian race. We have to throw off every sin and every weight that hinders us and run with endurance right to the end. Jesus said, “He who stands firm to the end will be saved.”(Matthew 24:13) Now, we believe that those who have been called by God, who are elect and chosen in him before the creation of the world, who come to a genuine faith in Christ and are justified by faith in Christ, they will never lose their justification and they will persevere to the end, but they must, they must persevere. So the word “if” like many other “ifs” in the New Testament, stands over us and urges us to keep running this race. We can’t get lazy. The author, he was going to say, we do not want you to become lazy. You need to keep fighting the good fight, finishing the race, keeping the faith. That’s what we have to do. So we are his house if we finish. If we didn’t finish, we never were part of his house. That’s what he’s saying.
“We can’t just begin the Christian race. We have to throw off every sin and every weight that hinders us and run with endurance right to the end. Jesus said, “He who stands firm to the end will be saved.”(Matthew 24:13)”
Joel
What are these three words, the confidence, boasting, and hope? He could have said, “If you continue in the faith,” but he gives these three words, our confidence, our boasting, and our hope. How does that really zero in on how he wants us to hold fast?
Andy
Well, he wants these Hebrew, these Jewish professors of faith in Christ to be absolutely filled with assurance of things hoped for; he is going to say later in this great epistle. He wants them to be buoyant and confident that even if you slay them, that you’re just sending them onto their eternal reward. He wants them to be confident, to not worry about finances, to not worry about their possessions that might be confiscated, to not worry about their freedom or even their physical health or physical lives. He wants them to have a confidence in Christ that is so powerful in evangelism because he knows that is the only way that these Jews who had not yet professed faith in Christ could be woken up from their rebellion and from their sinful death really being dead in their transgressions and sins, to come to Christ. And so he wants them to be bold and confident. There’s that sense of assurance of confidence. The opposite is unbelief really. If you don’t have that confident assurance, then that really is a form of unbelief.
Joel
Do you want to say any final thoughts on verses one through six?
Andy
Well, it’s a magnificent section. What it urges me to do, first and foremost, to just meditate on Christ all the time, think about his greatness, and think about the greatness of Christ when I’m tempted, when I’m tempted to sin. Think about the greatness of Christ when I’m tempted to think about how great my service is. I’m just a servant in God’s house and nowhere near as impactful as Moses. And Jesus is greater than Moses. He’s vastly greater than me.
Now, I want to be faithful as a servant in God’s house. I want to be faithful to do my ministry, but Jesus is the one who deserves glory as the builder of the house. I want to be a servant in the house, but Jesus deserves all glory and praise and honor for my life, for your life, Joe, for all of those who listen to us. For everything we do, Jesus gets the glory.
Joel
Amen. Well, that was episode five in Hebrews 3:1-6. Please join us next time for chapter three verses seven through 11. We’ll talk about this warning, do not harden your hearts. He says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” Thank you for listening, and God bless you all.
