Consider Christ (Hebrews 3.1-6)

Every time Christmas comes around, we tell the story. Mary and Joseph making the long trek to Bethlehem, Mary giving birth in less-than-ideal conditions, and then the wonder of this thing: God himself, born as a human boy. And every time we tell this story, I can’t help but think of when my own kids were born.

Their births were both incredible in their own ways, but it is a peculiar experience to have your first child. When Jack was born, it was after a very long and very difficult delivery. They almost had to rush Loanne into an emergency C-section because it was so bad. So when Jack finally came out, I was completely overwhelmed with emotion. I cried so much I made the nurses cry.

Now, that in itself doesn’t mean much: I cry a lot. Remember that Apple commercial a few years ago, the one where the soldier in Afghanistan was watching the birth of his kid over FaceTime? Complete meltdown for me. The fact that I was overcome with emotion isn’t that surprising.

Even so—and this is the experience of just about every parent ever, even those who manage to contain their emotions better than I did—when I held that little guy for the first time, I knew two things: first, that starting from this moment my life had fundamentally changed in ways I couldn’t control or predict; and second, that I would do anything for this kid. Anything. Meeting this child necessarily brought with it a number of acts that I would definitely perform.

If this is true about us when we become a parent, or when we find a husband or a wife, or when we’re adopted into a loving family after being without one, then it is infinitely more true about us when we find our Savior and our Lord, the Creator of all things.

If you remember the story, in Luke chapter 2, when the shepherds finally found the baby lying in the manger, they went out from there celebrating, glorifying and praising God for all they had seen and heard. When Jesus later approached the disciples in the gospels, they were so shaken by their encounter with him that they left everything to follow him.

Jesus is the one human being who changes everything for those who meet him.

The first two chapters of Hebrews have been a long description of why Jesus Christ should provoke such a profound and intense reaction in all of us—why Jesus Christ should leave none of us indifferent.

We see that Jesus is the perfect revelation of God himself: through Jesus, we see who God is and what he is like. We see Jesus compared to angels, these powerful beings known and respected by early Christians: Jesus is infinitely greater than the angels, in his majesty, and in his relationship to God the Father. And last week, we saw the kind of ruler and King he is: a King who lowers himself to be with his people, to take on our humanity and to take our punishment in our place.

We have one more brief comparison to see today, but most of all, today and next week, we’re going to see how we respond to him. Once we have found our Lord and King and Creator, what is the only appropriate response?

We see it in chapter 3.

Jesus and Moses

We see Jesus compared to Moses at the beginning of chapter 3. If you know your Bible at all, you know that Moses was revered by the Israelites and the early Jews: he was a standard for what it looked like to be a faithful servant of God.

Why is Jesus compared to Moses here, and not someone like Abraham or David? Those two men will come in later, but I think the author talks about Moses because of the rest of what he says in this passage. Abraham was at the beginning: he was the forefather of the people of Israel, but there wasn’t really a people when he was around. David came later—he was the greatest king of a kingdom that already existed.

Moses got in on the ground floor. Moses was integral in building the people of Israel, so to speak, in making it what it became. What we’ll see later on is that Jesus is building something too.

Let’s read v. 1-4:

Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, 2 who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. 3 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. 4 (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.)

What we see here is fairly obvious, so we won’t need to spend a lot of time on it. After comparing Jesus to angels, saying he is more glorious and powerful and majestic than they are, he now compares Jesus to Moses.

He gives us one similarity between the two men, and that is that they were both faithful to the task God had given to them. Moses wasn’t perfect—we know he didn’t enter the promised land with the people of Israel because he lost his temper and disobeyed God—but he was, by and large, a faithful servant of God.

But as faithful as Moses was, the author says that Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses.

Why? Because Moses was a servant, and Jesus is the King he served.

The example the author uses is a good one. He says in v. 3, 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.

The architect Frank Lloyd Wright is well known for his gorgeous and unusual buildings. In the town in Florida where Loanne and I met, there is a college called Florida Southern College (it’s where Loanne did her studies), and the buildings of that college were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s a strange place—not everyone is a fan of the style of the buildings on campus—but the architecture of Florida Southern is still renowned in the town. Not because the buildings themselves are magnificent, but because they were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The builder of a house has more honor than the house itself.

Every house is built by someone, the author says in v. 4, but the builder of all things is God.

The ministry of Moses, as revered as it was, wasn’t really Moses’s ministry at all. It was God’s ministry, God’s work—he was building the house.

That’s the first thing: when people look back at the ministry of Moses, they shouldn’t be impressed by Moses, but by God who was working through Moses. And the implication, which we saw in chapter 1, is that Jesus is this “God”, the builder of all things.

The second comparison, we see in v. 5-6:

5 Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, 6 but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son.

It’s similar to what we saw in chapter 1, when Jesus was compared to the angels. Moses was faithful, absolutely; but he was faithful as a servant. Jesus was faithful too, but his faithfulness was of a different sort; he was faithful as a son.

So in these verses, it’s not the quality of the work that is compared, but the role of the person doing the work. Moses was a servant; Jesus is a son. Moses “testified to the things that were to be spoken later”; he was getting things ready for what was to come. Jesus is “what was to come.” Everything Moses did was getting the people ready for Jesus.

I said before that I think the author used Moses as a point of comparison here because of what he was doing: the author says he was serving to “build the house” that God wanted to build. This “house”, of course, isn’t a literal building, but God’s people, the family we talked about last week. We know this because we see in the second half of v. 6:

And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

It shouldn’t escape our attention that there is a condition attached to this privileged place we hold: IF INDEED we hold fast… That is, there is a certain way to respond to Christ that shows that we are his house.

To come back to Frank Lloyd Wright: he has a very distinct style. If you know his work, you can take one look at a building and know it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, because of the characteristics of that building.

In the same way, there is a certain way of living that shows we are “God’s house”; there are certain ways of responding to Christ that show we are his people.

Our Response to Jesus

There are lots of examples we could give, but in today’s text, the author gives us three.

We see the first appropriate response in v. 1:

Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus…

It seems obvious to say it, but it’s not as obvious as we might think. Commands are given because not all of us will instinctively follow them. Some of us would never consider Jesus if we weren’t told to do so.

Here’s what I mean. How often do we spend time just thinking about who Jesus is? We consider what he can do for us, absolutely. But how often do we just consider him? Who he is, and what he does? How much of our mental energy is spent on just contemplating our Savior?

I hope quite a lot, but I suspect the answer to that question is, not too much.

Now why should we consider Jesus? The author tells us in v. 1: we consider Jesus because he is “the apostle and high priest of our confession.”

He is an “apostle”—not in the same way the other apostles are; the word “apostle” simply means one who is sent. Jesus was sent by God, to show us who God is. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, we saw in chapter 1, verse 3. Jesus was sent by God to show us who God is.

Second, he is “the high priest of our confession.” Remember what we saw last week? The high priest’s job was to stand as intermediary between God and man. That’s what Jesus did. By taking on our human nature, he is able to represent human beings. He took our place, lived our life and died our death, so that he might stand in the presence of God the Father and say, “These people’s sins have been covered. Your wrath against them has been satisfied.”

When we consider Jesus, we consider everything we saw in the first two chapters: his majesty and glory which is so high above that of the angels; his humility and lowliness that makes him a King worth following. And now, his faithfulness to the task God gave him. Faithfulness through every temptation, faithfulness through every struggle, faithfulness even to death.

Third, he is the builder, and we are his house. Of course that’s a metaphor, so let’s put it more plainly: if we want to know who we are, we need to consider our Creator and Savior. We are the house he is building, but how are we to have any idea what we’re supposed to look like if we don’t know the Builder? A disciple is someone who follows and learns from and imitates a master. How can we know how to live like our Master if we don’t consider our Master?

Consider Jesus. That is the first way we respond to Jesus.

Here is the second way; we see it in v. 6:

And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence…

Isn’t it interesting that he speaks about confidence? We might expect him to talk about purity or obedience—because those things absolutely play a part, as we’ll see next week. But for now, he shows us that the proper response to Christ is confidence: not in ourselves, but in him.

So many Christians today live their Christian lives like they’re walking on eggshells, always questioning whether or not they’re doing the right thing. Of course there is a place for such questioning—we should be making sure we’re following Christ as we ought to.

But there is a kind of self-examination that often does more harm than good. Ask yourself this: When I examine myself, when I question my behavior or my motives, am I afraid? Do I examine myself with fear in the pit of my stomach, wondering what will happen if I don’t measure up? What will happen if I learn that I’ve made a mistake?

I say this with all the love in my heart: you don’t measure up. I don’t measure up. None of us do. We will make mistakes; we do every day. Our ability to do the right thing is not the basis of our confidence.

Followers of Christ are meant to be a men and women full of confidence—not in ourselves, but in our Savior. That means that when we examine ourselves, we should feel confidence, not worry. When we examine ourselves, maybe we will see things that don’t measure up. Maybe we will see things that need to change.

But when we see things that need to change, even as we grieve over our sin, we are confident, because Christ is our Savior, and because of who he is and what he has done, we can change. The fact that we’re imperfect doesn’t mean that our salvation is in jeopardy; it means that Jesus still has the opportunity to make us more like him. And he promises to do just that. We have been predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son, Paul tells us in Romans 8.

We can wonder; we can question; but we don’t have to worry. We hold fast our confidence.

The final way we respond to Jesus in this text is similar. V. 6 again:

And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

This is a good step beyond simple confidence.

First of all, we boast in something: we boast in our hope.

I’ve said this before, but hope in the Bible isn’t hope the way we usually think of it. It’s not like when we say, “I hope it’s sunny tomorrow,” with no real certainty that it will happen, since it’s Paris and it’s winter.

I told you last Sunday that my brother got married a couple weeks ago. Hope in the Bible is closer to what my brother felt standing at the front of that church, waiting for the doors to open in the back and reveal his bride. The doors aren’t open yet, but he knows she’s right there, on the other side, waiting to come to him. It is the anticipation of what we can’t see yet.

This thing we can’t see yet, but that we know is coming, is the fulfillment of the work Christ has done. We have this hope: that one day, Christ will return, and on that day he will rid the world of sin and all its effects; he will raise us from the dead as he was raised from the dead, ridding our bodies of death and decay and sin; and we will live forever with him in the new heavens and the new earth, perfectly fulfilled in him as his people.

And this hope doesn’t leave us indifferent. It leaves us confident, as we saw before, but even more than that: it leaves us proud. We boast in our hope.

This may sound strange because of the high price the Bible places on humility—but again, it’s not pride in ourselves. We’re not proud of our own accomplishments. We’re proud of our brother, Jesus Christ, who lived died and was raised to give us this hope.

We’re proud of this incredible message we have been given to proclaim to the world—what an opportunity we have, to tell people how they can be free to live as they were created to live: forever, and perfect in that forever.

We’re proud of the God who knows all things and sees all things, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and who knows better than we do how we can be happy.

So many Christians lived ashamed of their faith. When they have the opportunity to speak about Christ, they hesitate, because they’re embarrassed. I’m as guilty of this as anyone; it’s hard to be proud of something that everyone else sees as ridiculous.

But is it ridiculous? Do we have a reason to be ashamed? Absolutely not. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1.18: For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

We have no reason to be ashamed. We are proud of our Savior. We boast in our hope.

Conclusion

I said earlier that when I held my kids for the first time, I was overcome with emotion. But I wasn’t just emotional; I was also determined. I looked them in the eyes, and I made them promises to live a certain way, not because it was his duty, but because I grasped the incredible gift I’d been given when they were born.

In the same way, when we know who Jesus is, and what he has done, we are driven to respond.

We consider our Savior. We think about him, we learn about him, we meditate on him. This Christmas, when we gather for meals or to exchange gifts, we remember that every light, every gift wrapping, every flavor in every food is about him. We wonder at the miracle of his coming: God made man, to save men and women from all nations, throughout all history. We remember the complexities of his character and the greatness of his glory, and that when we see him, we see God himself.

We hold fast our confidence. We don’t live our lives in fear. Christians who understand their Savior are necessarily confident, because they know that their place with God and their salvation does not depend on themselves. If we’re confident in ourselves, we will absolutely crash and burn, because we can’t live up to that confidence. But if we are confident in him, we are on rock-solid ground. We can wonder and examine ourselves, but we don’t have to worry. If we have repented of our sin and placed our faith in Christ, we are safe; he will not let us go.

And finally, we hold fast our boasting in our hope. We have received an incredible gift. This is what we try to tell our kids at Christmas, because the gifts under the tree can quickly become a consumerist feast. But we give gifts to remember the ultimate gift we have received—and it’s not a gift that “belongs” to us. It’s not a gift that came to us because we did something right, or belonged to the right tribe, or understood the right thing. Jesus Christ is a gift that was freely given to us by God, and it is a gift that is meant to be shared.

So we are not ashamed. For the rest of the world, it may seem like folly, but for those who are being saved, it is the power of God and the wisdom of God. We contemplate the majesty of the Son of God, and then we rush away from the manger, celebrating him to anyone who will take the time to listen to us.

This is how we respond to the Son of God.