SIMPLY JESUS
Jesus; the Real Deal
Hebrews 3:1-6
INTRODUCTION
-There is some great stuff happening with the Adventureland Ministries for kids back there.
-They are celebrating the end of their first workshop today and will be starting a new one on the life of David next week.
-Get your kids back there, and if you would like to help, we can always use people to work with the kids!
-We are on our 5th message in this Hebrews series and I wanted to start today with a quick recap of what we’ve covered so far.
-In week 1 we saw that Jesus is the Final Word from God.
-We looked at 7 facts about Jesus that all point to him being God.
-In week 2 we saw that Jesus is the King of Angels.
-No angel was ever called the Son of God; there is only 1 capital “S” son of God…and that is Jesus.
-In week 3 we were warned not to drift away from the message of Jesus, and saw that Jesus is our anchor.
-And last week we saw that Jesus is was 100% God and 100% man
-And because he came as a man he is able to identify with our suffering, he knows every temptation that we know, and he is able to help us with the trouble that comes our way.___________
-You’ll remember that the author of Hebrews is writing to Jewish Christians in the 1st century.
-We suspect that they were being persecuted and that some were considering walking away from the message they heard about JC.
-From this point on in Hebrews we are going to get into a lot of comparisons and contrast between Jesus and the Old Testament.
-And all of these are to drive home an important. Jesus and his covenant are superior to the OT in every possible way.
-And chapter 3 compares Jesus with Moses.
THE ROLES OF JESUS AND MOSES (vs 3:1-2)
3:1 And so, dear brothers and sisters who belong to God and are partners with those called to heaven, think carefully about this Jesus whom we declare to be God’s messenger and High Priest. 2 For he was faithful to God, who appointed him, just as Moses served faithfully when he was entrusted with God’s entire house.
-I like that phrase think carefully about Jesus.
-When you decide to follow Jesus, remember who you’re dealing with. This is….
JESUS THE MESSENGER: LITERALLY “APOSTLE”.
-Apostle was the official title given to the men who were charged with spreading the message of the gospel throughout the earth.
-Jesus isn’t called an apostle anywhere else in Scripture, but it’s a title that fits perfectly. Because apostle means messenger.
-And Jesus came with a message for all the world. He called his message the “Good News” and it’s the best we’ve ever heard.
-John 3:16 summarizes the Good News very well. Let’s read it together from the screen:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
-Jesus was sent to tell us that there is forgiveness of sins, and salvation, and hope of eternal life…through him.
-How does that compare to Moses? Moses was also a messenger, he was the one who delivered the OT Law to God’s people.
-The author also calls…JESUS THE HIGH PRIEST:
-That may not mean much to us…we’ve never had a high priest.
-But the original readers understood the author’s point here; they were Jewish and understood exactly who the High Priest was
-The high priest was the ultimate authority among the Jewish people. This was a holy man and the only man who could enter the holy of holies where the presence of God resided.
-Our author is saying that Jesus IS THE ONE WHO MEDIATES BETWEEN GOD AND HIS PEOPLE.
-And Moses also served as a mediator between God and the people of Israel. And he also says …
JESUS WAS FAITHFUL: That may be a bit of an understatement!
-Jesus was the only man who ever lived, who DID EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS SUPPOSED TO DO. every single time.
-In John 8:28 Jesus said, “I do nothing on my own but say only what the Father taught me.”
-He stayed true to his mission without deviating at all.
-And to a lesser degree Moses was also faithful:
-When the people all went astray, Moses confronted them.
-When the people made the golden calf to worship, Moses ground it up into powder, put in the water and made them drink it.
-He wasn’t messing around with God’s law! He was faithful.
-When they were complaining, whining, and wishing they could go back to Egypt, Moses stuck with God.
-You can see what the author is doing. He is comparing Jesus with Moses and pointing out some similarities:
-They were both messengers. They were both mediators.
-They were both faithful. Now, he starts to contrast them.
THE GLORY OF JESUS AND MOSES (vs 3)
3 But Jesus deserves far more glory than Moses, just as a person who builds a house deserves more praise than the house itself.
MOSES: GOD’S CHOSEN REPRESENTATIVE IN THE OT.
-To really understand the comparison between Jesus and Moses you have to put yourself in the mindset of the Jewish people.
-They loved Moses. Moses was their guy.
-If you wanted to get them all fired up just say something bad about Moses.
-A few years back I made the statement to a friend that the NBA player Kevin Garnett is a bully and a thug.
-Well I didn’t realize that my friend really liked to watch him play.
-And when I said that, he immediately defended KG…who in my opinion is indefensible. He’s a bully and a thug.
-So to help my friend see the error of his ways, I put together a little highlight reel with the help of you tube.
-And sent it over to him. Help him see that his favorite player is maybe not as great a guy as he thought he was.
-When you idolize someone, it’s hard to listen to someone criticize them. It’s hard to think anyone else is better.
-And that’s something the Jews really struggled with when they heard the Good News message about Jesus.
-“You’re saying this Jewish carpenter from Galilee is superior to Moses?” Are you crazy?!!! It’s Moses!
-They believed that Moses was a step above the angels.
-And you can understand why they felt this way.
-Moses was the miracle baby saved from Pharaoh’s campaign to kill babies.
-Though he was raised by the Egyptians, Moses took sides with the Jews.
-God spoke to Moses in the burning bush on Mt. Sinai.
-Moses was the one who had a show down with Pharaoh.
-Moses called the 10 plagues down on Egypt.
-Each plague was specifically designed to discredit an Egyptian god and to establish that there in only one true God.
-It was Moses who led the procession of God’s people…as they marched out of slavery in Egypt.
-Moses was the one who parted the Red Sea and marched the people safely across while crushing the Egyptian army.
-When the people trembled at God’s voice at Sinai, Moses went up and spoke with God on the mountain.
-Moses was the one that God showed himself to. He hid Moses in the side of the mountain and passed by him. (ex 33)
-Moses was the one whose face glowed after communing with God in on the mountain. The people freaked out and were in awe of Moses because he had the Hi-Pro Glow!
-Moses was the one that God gave the Law to.
-In fact…Moses and the law were synonymous.
-The Jews referred to God’s Law as the Law of Moses!
-And Moses didn’t just give them the Ten Commandments, but he was the author of the entire Pentateuch. (First 5 books)
-He was the one chosen to lay out all the laws for the worship of God and the governance of God’s people.
-Moses was the one who relayed the instructions for the Tabernacle.
-He was the one who gave the specs on the all the holy stuff that went inside the tabernacle.
-The Law was the most important thing in a Jewish person’s life.
-And Moses was the man that God gave it to.
-Moses was an apostle/messenger, he was a mediator, he was faithful. In Exodus 33:11 it says “The Lord would speak to Moses face to face as one speaks to a friend.”
-If you were Jewish, Moses was the man!
-When the Jews became Christians they had a fierce struggle with letting go of Moses and the Law.
-They were constantly slipping back into their old way of thinking.
-In the first church some Jewish Christians insisted the Gentile Christians be circumcised…if you don’t know what that is ask one of our Shepherds!
-Some of the Jewish Christians wouldn’t share meals with the Gentile Christians because of the Law of Moses.
-Even the apostle Peter slipped back into that habit one time.
-This was the thing that defined them, that distinguished them from all the other people on the earth. The…Law…of…Moses.
-But in our passage the author says, “Jesus deserves far more glory than Moses.”
JESUS: GOD’S CHOSEN REPRESENTATIVE IN THE NT; GOD HIMSELF!
-Even though they knew who Jesus was, they still struggled with this truth. Giving up Moses and going all in for Jesus was radical.
-And you know what? People are still struggle with this same thing today.
-This truth, that Jesus is the one who deserves all the glory!
-BUT HOW CAN WE GIVE HIM ALL THE GLORY WHEN OUR IDENTITY IS CAUGHT UP IN LESSER THINGS?
-How can we give Jesus all the glory when what we care most about in life is how our bodies look? How big your muscles are or how skinny our waist is?
-How can we give Jesus all the glory when we care most about making money and having all the things that money brings?
-How can we give Jesus all the glory when we’re too busy to read his word, talk to him in prayer, or gather with his people?
-How can we give Jesus all the glory when we decide that our life mission is more important his life mission?
-How can we give Jesus all the glory when we care more about our kids having a college education and a letterman’s jacket than about them knowing and following Jesus Christ?
-How can we give Jesus all the glory when we’re following our own Law? The Law of “me and what I want.”
-We can criticize the Jews who were struggling to let go of their identity as followers of Moses…but we should at least take the planks out of our own eyes first before pointing out the spec in theirs.
-There are so many thing that compete for the glory that only belongs to Jesus.
-As Christians, we are in a struggle to keep our attention squarely centered on Jesus. Because he deserves all the glory.
THE WORK OF JESUS AND MOSES (VS 4-6)
4 For every house has a builder, but the one who built everything is God. 5 Moses was certainly faithful in God’s house as a servant. His work was an illustration of the truths God would reveal later. 6 But Christ, as the Son, is in charge of God’s entire house. And we are God’s house, if we keep our courage and remain confident in our hope in Christ.
The work of Moses was only an Illustrations of truth:
-This is going to become more important later in the book.
-The author is touching on something profound here; all of the rituals that we see in the OT…
-All of the offerings, the instructions for worship. Even the buildings and the utensils, were all just illustrations.
-All of the elaborate rituals in the OT were not the real thing…they were illustrations; symbols pointing to the real thing.
THE LAW OF MOSES POINTED TOWARD JESUS!
-And we have Jesus now so we don’t need the rituals anymore.
-I would go so far as to say we are not called to be religious or ritualistic people…rituals are for people who don’t have the real thing. We have the real thing and his name is Jesus!
-This past summer I was in Moab for a week which is in the middle of Utah somewhere. And I wanted to find a church to attend but our options were pretty limited.
-I found a church and we showed up Sunday ready to go.
-As we walked into the lobby we were handed a 12 page manual of instructions for the worship service. Not exaggerating.
-When it was time to start they said so, and everyone turned to page 1. And thus began our 12 page, 1 hour service of rituals.
-Whatever the page said to do we did. We stood. We sat. They read. We read. They sang. We sang. We turned a page.
-When the manual said somebody in a robe walk down the aisle, somebody in a robe walked down the aisle.
-It felt like a very complicated version of “Simon Says.”
-When it was time to pray someone read a prayer from a book that was written 200 years ago. We turned a page.
-The manual said turn to your neighbor and say, “peace” and everybody did. And we turned a page.
-And one page at a time we worshipped God according to the script, and when we got to the last page, it said to pray, we did and then everybody went home.
-That’s how the Law of Moses was.
-People could memorize all the rules, keep all the rules, follow the detailed instructions and feel very religious.
-But it was very easy for people to go through those motions without thinking for a second about their God.
-Because they were caught up in the religious rituals, they forgot about their Heavenly Father!
-And people still do that today. They get hung up on the forms of worship, styles of music, the methods of teaching, and they miss out on Jesus.
-For centuries these Jews only had rituals that pointed to Christ, and then they had Christ…the real thing…but they were considering going back to the rituals.
-You’ll notice the final comparison in our passage today…
SERVANT: MOSES WAS MERELY A SERVANT IN GOD’S HOUSE.
-He was a steward, a manager, someone who looked after God’s house. But in contrast he says that the…
SON: JESUS IS THE SON GOD HAS PUT IN CHARGE OF HIS HOUSE.
-You might ask the servant a question when the son is gone.
-You might ask the servant for help, or look to him for assistance.
-But if the Son is in the house, you go to the Son not the servant.
-And that is precisely what the author is trying to get the Jews to understand.
-Don’t go back to the servant when you have the Son!
-Jesus is the Son of God. He owns the house and vs 6 says…
HOUSE: WE ARE THE HOUSE THAT GOD HAS ENTRUSTED TO JESUS THE SON.
-It’s so important that we think carefully about Jesus. That we stop to remember who are dealing with.
-One of my favorite stories…you’ve probably heard it, it’s old…
-It’s a story about a pair of battleships that were heading back to port after doing maneuvers at sea.
-The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.
-Shortly after dark, the lookout reported, "Light, bearing on the starboard bow." (That’s the right hand side for you landlovers!)
-"Is it steady or moving astern?" the captain called out.
-Is it holding still or is it coming towards us?
-The lookout replied, "Steady, Captain," which meant they were on a collision course with the other ship.
-The captain then called to the signalman, "Signal that ship: 'We are on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees.'"
-An answer came back, "Advise that you change course 20 degrees."
-The captain said, "Send: "I'm a captain, change course twenty degrees.'" The reply came back…
-"I'm a seaman second-class," came the reply. "You had better change course twenty degrees."
-By that time the captain was furious. He spat out, "Say this: 'I'm a battleship. Change course twenty degrees.'"
-Back came the flashing reply, "I'm a lighthouse." The captain changed course.
Max Lucado, In the Eye of the Storm, Word Publishing, 1991, p. 153.
-Jesus doesn’t move for anyone. Think carefully about him.
-Jesus doesn’t have a message…he has THE MESSAGE.
-Jesus isn’t some spokesman for God…Heb 1 says he’s final word!
-He isn’t a way to heaven…He is the only way to heaven.
-Because Jesus is Lord of all. Greater than Moses, greater than the law, greater than those lesser things that steal his glory.
-Are you ready to make Jesus Lord of your life?
