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If you would remain standing, give your attention to the reading of God’s word.
We’ll be reading from Hebrews chapter three, verses one through six.
Hebrews chapter three, verses one through six.
Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a 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 God’s house as a son, and we are his house,
if indeed we hold fast our confidence and are boasting in our hope.
You may be seated. Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, we ask that you would open our eyes to see your word,
to see what you have for us, that you would change us by your word.
We live by your word.
You’ve given us new life, and we ask that this evening that by your word
you would be kind, merciful.
You would give us your spirit so that your word might bring life to us.
We ask that you might give clarity to me, your servant,
that your people might truly see and hear what is the word of God from your word.
We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Have you ever visited a truly impressive house?
I know that some of you in this congregation have visited the house
not too far from here called Falling Water.
Callie and I have not yet visited that, but it’s on our list, and I hear it’s quite a sight.
I grew up in North Carolina, and we used to visit the Biltmore Estate
or the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina with my family,
and Callie and I have visited a few times after we got married.
I’ve always been fascinated by houses, and to this day,
I can’t drive past a construction site without wanting to stop and take a look around.
I had the privilege when I was 16 of helping be engaged with my family in building a log home.
We got to be engaged from the very beginning, setting out the plans,
scribbling them on graph paper, taking it to an architect who actually made the walls the proper width,
and fixing our plans into a blueprint.
Then we actually saved money by doing a bit of the work ourselves.
I was 16 and didn’t have a construction license,
but anything that didn’t require an electrician’s license or a plumber’s license,
I helped my 14 and 12-year-old brothers work on doing the finishing work,
covering the walls, trimming out the doors and windows, and all the rest.
I learned a lot, had a lot of fun, didn’t have too many accidents.
But here’s the great thing about houses, great houses especially,
while they’re great in their own right, they ultimately stand as a testament to their designer and builder.
All of the glory that a house garners goes to its architect and commissioner.
The Biltmore Mansion’s impressive size and beauty point to Mr. Vanderbilt
and the architect he hired, Richard Morris Hunt.
Similarly, we cannot talk about Falling Waterhouse
without mentioning its architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, and its commissioner, Edgar Kaufman.
Although neither of these houses were built by these men alone,
and they very likely did very little of the work themselves,
it is they who receive that chief credit.
And our passage this evening in Hebrews is talking about houses
and contrasting the glory that a house gets and the glory that its builder gets.
Now in our passage this evening, we’re going to consider three things.
We’re going to consider Moses, who’s worthy of honor.
And then we’ll consider Jesus, who’s worthy of more honor.
And finally, we’ll consider God’s house, which is a household of faith.
So let’s start by considering Moses.
First, consider Moses worthy of honor.
Now why would the author of Hebrews want to bring up Moses?
I think we can all agree that we believe that Jesus is superior to Moses.
In our day, if you brought up this point, we would all agree with that.
But I think that many times this higher view that we have of Jesus
is not because we have such a high view of Jesus,
but because we have too low of a view of Moses.
So I want to spend a few minutes elevating our view and our understanding of Moses
to the point that I believe the first audience of this epistle would have had.
If you were to ask me, what person am I most excited to meet when we get to heaven?
It would be Moses.
In verse two, we have in our passage, it says that Moses was faithful in all God’s house.
Now we just read a little bit earlier from Numbers 12,
which is actually, this is the quote that this comes from.
Numbers chapter 12, if we flip back there and look,
we find it says in verse seven that Moses was faithful in all God’s house.
The context is that Aaron and Miriam have been questioning Moses,
but God comes down to vindicate his servant Moses.
And in verse seven, he says, Moses is faithful in all my house.
And then verse eight, with him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, not in riddles,
and he beholds the form of the Lord.
Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?
See, God is distinguishing Moses from all of his other servants.
No one has been as close to God as Moses was.
He beheld the form of the Lord.
And Moses actually penned more words in our Bibles
than any other human author of the Scriptures.
He gave us the first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Have you ever considered how our Bibles are put together,
how our Bible is constructed?
Because if you think about all the religions all over the world
and throughout history, people have come forward with claims about divine revelation.
Now usually, it’s an individual who has gone away into a cave off by himself somewhere else.
He has a private experience, and he comes and I have a word from the Lord,
and we’re just supposed to take his word for it.
Whether it’s Islam or Mormonism, all of these religions are based on a private individual
having what he claims is an encounter with God.
But the Bible is different. The Bible is unique.
It’s not produced by a single individual going off in a corner into a trance,
writing things down that cannot be independently verified.
If you were living in Palestine around 900 B.C. or sometime during the Bible,
and someone comes up claiming to be a prophet of God, how do you know if he’s lying?
What’s your criteria to determine his truthfulness?
Well, I think many of us would be inclined to say, does he do miraculous things?
Is he doing miracles?
And we might cite to back that up Deuteronomy 18.
In Deuteronomy 18, God gives criterion for Israel.
If you say in your heart, how may we know the word that the Lord has spoken?
When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or does not come true,
that is a word that the Lord has not spoken.
That’s what we have in Deuteronomy 18.
And yet, if we look earlier in Deuteronomy 13, we find that false prophets do miracles as well.
So we need a better test than simply miracles.
Deuteronomy 13 verses 1 through 3 says that if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you
and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass,
and if he says, let us go after other gods which you have not known, and let us serve them,
you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord has not sent him.
He is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
So even false prophets can bring the miraculous.
So what we need is something which we can evaluate that message.
And this is where Moses comes in.
See, the books that we have from Moses, the first five books of our Bible, they weren’t penned in secret.
Millions of people saw God miraculously deliver the Israelites out of Egypt,
walk them right through the Red Sea, and watched him descend in a pillar of fire
and speak directly from heaven on Mount Sinai to Moses.
There was no question about whether Moses had actually spoken with God.
Everyone could see that.
And then what Moses wrote becomes the measuring stick against which all future prophets,
whether it’s Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, if they are preaching something that contradicts these first five books,
the Pentateuch, the Torah, that Moses gives us, you know that they are not from God.
Christianity, the Bible, is based on the unmistakable, verifiable, massive displays of power and word,
confirming that it comes from the living God.
He’s not asking anyone to believe a private revelation that you had yourself that doesn’t come from God.
So we know that Moses heard from God.
And if you contradict Moses, then you must not be hearing from God,
no matter how many miracles you do.
And this brings us to start to understand why the Jews would have held Moses in such high esteem.
It was to him that the law was given.
He uniquely talked with God face to face in a way that no one else ever did.
The Jews esteemed Moses very highly, and so should we.
But now our text in Hebrews chapter three brings out three ways in which Moses was faithful.
The first is that Moses was a faithful servant.
If you look at verse five, it says, now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant.
He was not inventive, not authoritative, but obedient.
He was a servant.
We’ve been reading through the book of Exodus in prayer meeting,
and the story starts out with exciting plagues and miracles,
but slows down once they get to Mount Sinai.
And then you have chapter upon chapter of instructions,
followed by chapter upon chapter of how they followed those instructions.
But if you step back and look at the big picture,
Moses, at the beginning of the book, is reluctant, disobedient to God.
But by the end of the book, we’ve gotten so used to this phrase,
and Moses did everything as the Lord had commanded him,
that we start to skip over it.
But the big picture point is that Moses faithfully did what was commanded him.
He was a faithful servant who obeyed God just as he was told.
But the next thing we see in our passage is that one particular way in which Moses obeyed
was in building the tabernacle.
Moses was a faithful builder of God’s house.
We see this in Exodus.
Moses was not only famous for giving the law that he received from God,
he was the original constructor of the tabernacle, the first house of God.
Hebrews 8.5 reminds us when Moses was about to erect the tent,
he was instructed by God saying,
See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain.
See Moses as a faithful builder who followed God’s direct blueprint exactly.
The last part of Exodus can start to feel very repetitive,
because there’s a whole bunch of chapters in which God tells Moses how to build the tabernacle,
how to build his house, and then a whole bunch of chapters
that just say that Moses did it exactly as God said.
But the point is clear, Moses followed God’s instructions exactly.
He was a faithful builder of God’s house.
But Moses’ faithfulness as a builder and as a servant,
all of this was meant to point beyond himself.
And so Moses, we see, is a faithful testifier of the things to come.
Verse 5 in our passage in chapter 3 of Hebrews says,
Moses was faithful to testify to the things that were to be spoken later.
Moses himself was intended, just like everything else he did, to point beyond himself.
The Jews in Jesus’ day, the problem was they thought Moses was the end-all be-all.
For instance, the Sadducees, a whole sect of the Jewish religion,
they only accepted the first five books of Moses as scripture.
They threw out everything else that came afterwards, but they were wrong.
Moses was great, that’s true, but his role was to point to someone who was to come later.
Even Moses’ own life demonstrates this.
I’ve often thought about the fact that Moses didn’t get to enter the promised land.
He did all of these things, brought the law, built the tabernacle,
and yet he is forbidden from actually entering the promised land.
Yes, it is a punishment for disobedience that he disobeyed God and couldn’t enter.
But we’re going to see in chapters 3 and 4 of Hebrews
that the promised land was meant to represent heaven.
And we notice that Moses, who brought Israel out of Egypt,
who brought them the law and built the tabernacle, couldn’t bring them into that land himself.
He had to step aside for his immediate successor, Joshua,
which we could also say Yeshua, or we could also say Jesus.
Yes, Jesus and Joshua are the same name in Hebrew.
And so Moses’ own life of bringing people up to that point and yet not fully in that promised land,
and the one who brought them in was named Joshua, or Jesus, which means God saves.
So the question, I think, as we consider Moses, who is worthy of great honor,
what about us as God’s servants? Are we seeking to point beyond ourselves?
Do we really want people to look past us and look beyond us to Jesus?
Moses is a role model, faithful to be a witness concerning the one who would come after him.
But so second, our passage would have us consider Jesus.
We’ve considered Moses, who was faithful, worthy of great honor, but Jesus is worthy of more honor.
Verse 1 tells us, consider Jesus. He was faithful like Moses, verse 2,
yet worthy of more glory than Moses, verse 3.
Now he’s worthy of more glory because he has superior roles.
He and Moses are similar. Both were faithful, but Christ’s roles that he is given are more glorious,
and so he receives the greater glory. And the first thing we’ll see that Christ is a faithful representative.
While Moses was a faithful servant, Christ is a faithful representative, and we see this in verse 1.
Verse 1 says that Christ is the apostle and high priest of our confession.
Both of these roles involve representation.
Apostle, this designation of Christ as an apostle is actually the only time that we find this,
Christ being called this in all of scripture.
But normally when we hear the word apostle, we think of those 12 followers of Jesus.
Sometimes we even get the words apostle and disciple confused.
But the word apostle is actually different. Disciple means follower.
Apostle is messenger or sent one.
But actually in the New Testament it comes to have a technical definition as an eyewitness
and representative ambassador for Christ in the church.
So Christ here in our passage is said to be appointed as an apostle by God.
He represents God. He is God.
And then secondly we see the high priest.
High priest is meant to represent the people.
Moses served God and the people, but Christ represented God and the people.
So Christ is worthy of more glory than Moses because he in his faithful representation of God as God
and man as man, he brought them together to bring about that reconciliation within himself.
And then secondly, Christ superior to Moses extends to him being a faithful architect of God’s house.
Moses was faithful to assemble God’s house, but Christ is like the architect.
Moses had assembled that house, but whose house was Moses building?
Who was in charge? Who wrote the blueprints?
Verse three, for Christ has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses.
As much more glory as the builder of the house has more honor than the house itself.
For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.
Even construction workers on a house don’t usually get much recognition.
We don’t even notice them unless they fail to follow the blueprints.
But they do deserve some credit when they get things right.
Yet at the same time we refer to falling water for instance as being built by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Not because he hammered every nail or tightened every screw, because he designed it.
Because he is the architect.
So Moses was great to assemble the house, but understand he was just following the instructions that he got from Jesus.
Moses put it together, but ultimately it was God who built it.
Jesus’ superior glory to Moses comes from the fact that he is the architect of the house that Moses built.
But Jesus is not only the architect, a faithful architect of the house that Moses built.
He’s also a faithful embodiment of those things that Moses testified about.
Of those things that were to come.
Because he is the son.
Verses five and six of our passage contrast Moses as a servant in and Christ as a son over.
This is a contrast between a servant and his master.
Servant in versus son over the house.
Going back to Moses, as the audience seemed tempted to do, the writer of Hebrews says,
that’s like chatting up the butler who opens the door and completely ignoring the master of the house who walks up behind him.
The butler shows you in the door, but if he’s doing a good job you hardly notice him.
Moses was the butler in God’s house, the servant.
But his role is entirely to testify, to point to the things that were to come.
To the heir, to the son who is in charge, Jesus.
If you miss Jesus because you’re focused on Moses, you’re getting Moses all wrong.
It’s not Moses’ house, he just works here.
The house belongs to the son.
So we’ve considered Moses and we’ve considered Christ.
To move on to our final consideration, consider God’s house, the household of faith.
First, the honor due the architect of God’s house.
The first thing we have to say is that the nature of an exceptional house is to give glory to its builder and its owner.
The first two questions that come up when considering, when looking at, admiring a beautiful house is
who built it? Who designed it? Who’s the architect?
And then second, who owns it? Who was it built for? Who commissioned it?
God built his house and God owns his house.
The more beautiful God’s house is, the more credit, the more glory and honor he is due.
But this leads us to consider the second thing, which is the makeup of God’s house.
The makeup of God’s house. We’ve been thinking about houses and house builders.
But then we get a plot twist in verse 6.
Look at verse 6, the second sentence.
And we are his house.
This whole time we’ve been thinking about physical houses.
Moses was faithful to assemble things according to God’s design and instructions.
He’s also the butler in God’s house. But where do we fit in?
How do we relate to all of this?
Are we mere spectators, admiring Jesus as the architect and commissioner of the house that Moses built?
No.
If we turn to 2 Samuel chapter 7, verses 1 through 17, we find something interesting.
I’m not going to read this whole passage, but rather just sum up what we find here.
But you can write it down for later. 2 Samuel chapter 7, verses 1 through 17.
David has built himself a palace. God has established David as king.
And David has built himself a glorious, beautiful palace.
But he finds himself embarrassed that his own house seems to upstage God’s humble tabernacle, originally built by Moses.
So David makes big plans to build a temple.
And Nathan is fully on board. A big, glorious house for God.
But that night, God sends Nathan back.
And God has an answer for David. His answer comes back.
No, David, before you build me a house, I’m going to build you a house.
What does he mean? Well, this play on words carries right over from the Hebrew into English.
House is a physical building we might dwell in, but also a household or family and descendants.
God says, before you build me a physical dwelling, I’m going to build you a dynasty, a house.
And Hebrews 3, 6 is doing that same thing, taking that imagery of house and turning it, saying,
And we are his house. We are Christ’s house.
If we were to look over, if you turn over to 2 Chronicles 6, 18, or just listen as I read,
2 Chronicles 6, 18, we find that Solomon is praying for the dedication of the temple that he’s just built.
Solomon, David’s son, has just finished building the temple that David wasn’t allowed to build.
But he says this, But will God indeed dwell with man on earth?
Behold, heaven, in the highest heaven, cannot contain you.
How much less this house that I have built.
Solomon gets it. The real house of God is not a building.
If we flip over to 1 Peter 2, 4, we find Peter spelling this out explicitly.
In the New Testament, Peter describes it this way, 1 Peter 2, 4, he says,
As you come to him a living stone, rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious,
You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house.
Peter gives us this picture of God building a house.
But instead of big stone blocks, it’s made up of people.
One by one, God is gathering and placing believers into the walls of the house in which he intends to dwell.
This is why Hebrews 3, verse 6 says, We are his house.
It also relates back to verse 1 of our passage in the way that the author addresses his audience.
Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling.
What heavenly calling? Heavenly calling? Being part of God’s house.
God is building a big, beautiful house made up of living stones.
Holy brothers and sisters who have a heavenly calling.
A calling to be a part of God’s family and a place where he dwells.
God’s house is his people who have been made holy.
That is where he dwells.
Moses served in the house, but ultimately, he was merely one more part of that house.
Jesus is both the cornerstone of that house and the builder of that house.
And this leads us to close by considering a third consideration of God’s house, which is how to be a part of God’s house.
How to be a part of God’s house.
Look at that final part of verse 6.
And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.
There’s a condition here. We are if.
The writer offers assurance. We are.
But it’s not unqualified assurance.
It says if indeed.
It’s an invitation, if you’ve never done so before, but also an exhortation to continue if you’ve already begun.
Do what?
Hold fast.
Hold fast to two things.
One, our confidence, and two, our boasting in our hope.
What does that mean?
Imagine you’ve fallen off the side of an ocean liner.
And as the salt water is filling your lungs, someone yells out, hang on tight as they throw you a lifesaver.
You’d hang on tight for dear life at that moment.
But you wouldn’t just let go after a few seconds, would you?
You’re going to keep holding on until you’re all the way safe on the boat.
Our confidence and our hope rest on the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus.
In this passage, holding fast to your confidence means holding on to a person.
The writer of Hebrews is concerned that his audience will be tempted to stop holding on to their confidence in Jesus and look for confidence somewhere else, maybe in Moses.
But Hebrews is saying that would be like holding on to the lifesaver and cutting the rope that could haul you back to the ship and instead causing yourself to drift out into the sea and be lost.
Moses is only helpful to the extent that he points us to Christ.
No one can be a part of Moses’ house.
Moses is a part of Christ’s house.
Becoming a part of Christ’s house and remaining a part of Christ’s house means making him your confession, verse one, your confidence, verse six, and your hope, verse six as well.
It’s what we call faith, putting your trust in Christ and his faithful work and not looking back.
Confessing that he is God, God’s representative apostle, confessing that you need his high priestly atonement for your sins and then confidently relying on who he is and what he’s done in taking away your sin and then banking your eternity on him.
Going all in, relying on him to make you holy, to make you his holy brothers and sisters.
But our passage doesn’t end on confidence.
It doesn’t just say hold fast to your confidence, but also to our boasting in our hope.
Confidence is internal.
It’s an attitude.
It’s a disposition.
But boasting is verbal and outward.
You can’t boast silently to yourself.
Boasting is an outward expression of inward confidence.
The good news that Jesus is worthy of much more glory than Moses, that he has actually paid for our sins himself,
that he has actually given us a real hope of glory in his person and work is not meant to be kept to ourselves.
We are to hold fast to our boasting in this hope.
People should know about it.
See, the writer of Hebrews doesn’t want his audience to be content holding fast to their own inward confidence in Christ,
which might keep them from being embarrassed or keep them from being persecuted.
Confidence is important, but he urges them to hold fast to boasting.
He urges them to boldly tell others about their confidence that they have a hope of glory.
Brothers and sisters, you who share in a heavenly calling, you who are part of Christ’s house, he urges you and I to do the same.
Let’s hold fast our confidence in being part of Christ’s house and not stay silent, but boast.
Let others know of the hope that we have. Amen.
Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, we thank you that you have given us, you have appointed Jesus Christ, and he has been faithful,
faithful apostle, faithful high priest, and we can hold fast our confidence and our boasting in him.
We ask that you would make us steadfast in this. You would hold on to us.
We pray this in Jesus’ name for his sake. Amen.
Let’s respond in singing hymn 403. In 403, glorious things of thee are spoken.
And if you would please stand.