Verses 1-19
Chapter 3
3:1-6 Brothers who are
dedicated to God, you who are sharers in heaven's calling, because of
all this you must fix your attention on him whom our creed holds to be
the apostle and the high priest of God, I mean Jesus, for he was
faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses was in all his house,
For he was deemed worthy of more honour than Moses, in so far as the man
who builds and equips the house has more honour than the house itself
For every house is built and equipped by someone; but it is God who
builds and equips all things. Moses was faithful in all his house, but
his role was the role of a servant, and his purpose was to bear witness
to the things which some day would be spoken. But Christ is over his
house because he is a Son. We are his house if only we keep strong the
confidence and pride of our hope to the end.
Let us remember the conviction with which the writer to the
Hebrews starts. The basis of his thought is that the supreme revelation
of God comes through Jesus Christ and that only through him has a man
real access to God. He began by proving that Jesus was superior to the
prophets; he went on to prove that Jesus was superior to the angels; and
now he proceeds to prove that Jesus is superior to Moses.
It might at first sight seem that this is an anticlimax. But it
was not so for a Jew. For him Moses held a place which was utterly
unique. He was the man with whom God had spoken face to face as a man
speaks with his friend. He was the direct recipient of the Ten
Commandments, the very Law of God. The greatest thing in all the world
for the Jew was the Law, and Moses and the Law were one and the same
thing. In the second century a Jewish teacher called Rabbi Jose ben
Chalafta, commenting on this very passage which declared that Moses was
faithful in all his house, said: "God calls Moses faithful in all his
house, and thereby he ranked him higher than the ministering angels
themselves." For a Jew the step that the writer to the Hebrews takes is
the logical and inevitable step in the argument. He has proved that
Jesus is greater than the angels; now he must prove that he is greater
than Moses who was greater than the angels.
In fact this quotation which is used to tell of the greatness of
Moses is proof of the unique position which the Jews assigned to him.
"Moses was faithful in all his house." The quotation is from Numbers 12:6-7.
Now the point of the argument in Numbers is that Moses differs from all
the prophets. To them God makes himself known in a vision; to Moses he
speaks "mouth to mouth." To the Jew it would have been impossible to
conceive that anyone ever stood closer to God than Moses did, and yet
that is precisely what the writer of the Hebrews sets out to prove.
He bids his hearers fix their attention on Jesus. The word he uses (katanoein, Greek #2657)
is suggestive. It does not mean simply to look at or to notice a thing.
Anyone can look at a thing or even notice it without really seeing it.
The word means to fix the attention on something in such a way that its
inner meaning, the lesson that it is designed to teach, may be learned.
In Luke 12:24
Jesus uses the same word when he says: "Consider the ravens." He does
not merely mean, "Look at the ravens." He means, "Look at the ravens and
understand and learn the lesson that God is seeking to teach you
through them." If we are ever to learn Christian truth, a detached
glance is never enough; there must be a concentrated gaze in which we
gird up the loins of the mind in a determined effort to see its meaning
for us.
In a sense the reason for that is implicit when the writer
addresses his friends as sharers in heaven's calling. The call that
comes to a Christian has a double direction. It is a calling from heaven
and it is a calling to heaven. It is a voice which comes from God and
calls us to God. It is a call which demands concentrated attention
because of both its origin and its destination. A man cannot afford to
give a disinterested glance to an invitation to God from God.
When we do fix our attention on Jesus what do we see? We see two things.
(i) We see the great apostle. No one else in the New Testament
ever calls Jesus an apostle. That the writer to the Hebrews does so
deliberately is quite clear, because apostle is a title he never gives
to any man. He keeps it for Christ.
What does he mean when he so uses it? The word apostolos (Greek #652)
literally means one who is sent, forth. In Jewish terminology it was
used to describe the envoys of the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the
Jews. The Sanhedrin sent out apostoloi (Greek #652)
who were clothed with its authority and the bearers of its commands. In
the Greek world it frequently meant ambassador. So then Jesus is the
supreme ambassador of God and an ambassador has two supremely important
and relevant characteristics.
(a) The ambassador is clothed with all the authority of the king
who sends him. On one occasion the king of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes,
invaded Egypt. Rome desired to stop him and sent an envoy called
Popillius to tell him to abandon his projected invasion. Popillius
caught up with Antiochus on the borders of Egypt and they talked of this
and that for they had known each other in Rome. Popillius had not the
vestige of an army with him, not even a guard. Finally Antiochus asked
him why he had come. Quietly Popillius told him that he had come to tell
him that Rome wished him to abandon the invasion and go home. "I will
consider it," said Antiochus. Popillius smiled a little grimly; he took
his stall and drew a circle in the earth round Antiochus. "Consider it,"
he said, "and come to your decision before you leave that circle."
Antiochus thought for a few seconds and then said: "Very well. I will go
home." Popillius himself had not the slightest force available--but
behind him was all the power of Rome. So Jesus came from God and all
God's grace and mercy and love and power were in his apostolos (Greek #652).
(b) The voice of the ambassador is the voice of the king or
country who sent him. In a foreign land the British ambassador's voice
is the voice of Britain. So Jesus came with the voice of God; in him God
speaks.
(ii) Jesus is the great High Priest. What does that mean? This
is an idea to which the writer to the Hebrews returns again and again.
Just now we only set down the fundamental basis of what he means. The
Latin for a priest is pontifex, which means a bridge-builder. The priest
is the person who builds a bridge between man and God. To do that he
must know both man and God. He must be able to speak to God for men and
to speak to men for God. Jesus is the perfect High Priest because he is
perfectly man and perfectly God; He can represent man to God and God to
man. He is the one person through whom man comes to God and God comes to
man.
Wherein then lies the superiority of Jesus over Moses? The
picture in the mind of the writer to the Hebrews is this. He thinks of
the world as God's house and God's family. We use the word house in a
double sense. We use it in the sense of a building and also in the sense
of a family. The Greeks used oikos (Greek #3624)
in the same double sense. The world, then, is God's house and men are
God's family. But he has already shown us the picture of Jesus as the
creator of God's universe. Now Moses was only part of God's universe,
part of the house. But Jesus is the creator of the house and the creator
is bound to stand above the house itself. Moses did not create the law;
he only mediated it. Moses did not create the house; he only served in
it. Moses did not speak of himself; all that he ever said was only a
pointer to the greater things that Jesus Christ would some day say.
Moses, in short, was the servant; but Jesus was the Son. Moses knew a
little about God; Jesus was God. Therein lies the secret of his
superiority.
Now the writer to the Hebrews uses another picture. True, the
whole world is God's house; but in a special sense the Church is God's
House, for in a special sense God brought it into being. That is a
picture the New Testament loves (compare 1 Peter 4:17; 1 Timothy 3:15, and especially 1 Peter 2:5).
That building of the Church will stand indestructible only when every
stone is firm; that is to say, when its every member is strong in the
proud and confident hope he has in Jesus Christ. Each one of us is like a
stone in the Church; if one stone is weak the whole edifice is
endangered. The Church stands firm only when each living stone in it is
rooted and grounded in faith in Jesus Christ.
3:7-19 So then, as the
Holy Spirit says, "If today you will hear my voice, do not harden your
hearts, as in the Provocation, as happened on the day of the Temptation
in the wilderness, where your fathers tried to test me, and, in
consequence, experienced for forty years what I could do. So my anger
was kindled against that generation, and I said, 'Always they wander in
their hearts; they do not know my ways.' So I swore in my anger, 'Very
certainly they shall not enter in to my rest.'" Have a care, brothers,
lest that evil and disobedient heart be in any of you in a state of
rebellion against the living God. But keep on exhorting each other day
by day, so long as the term "today" can be used, lest any among you be
hardened in heart by the seductiveness of sin; for you have become
participators in Christ, if indeed you hold fast the beginning of your
confidence firm to the end. While it is still possible to hear it being
said, "If today you will hear my voice," do not harden your hearts as at
the Provocation. For who heard and provoked God? Was it not all who
came forth from Egypt under the leadership of Moses? Against whom was
God's anger kindled for forty years? Was it not against those who had
sinned and whose bones lay in the desert? To whom did he swear that they
should not enter into his rest, if not to those who were disobedient?
Thus we see that it was through disobedience that they could not enter
in.
The writer to the Hebrews has just been striving to prove the
unique supremacy of Jesus and now he leaves argument for exhortation. He
presses upon his hearers the inevitable consequence of this unique
supremacy. If Jesus is so uniquely great, it follows that complete trust
and complete obedience must be given to him. If they harden their
hearts and refuse to give him their obedient trust the consequences are
bound to be terrible.
The way in which he buttresses his argument is for us very
difficult for it is doubly allusive. He begins by making a quotation
from Psalms 95:7-11.
That Psalm appeals to those who hear it not to be like the children of
Israel but, as the King James Version renders it. "Harden not your
hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation." Now the two
phrases, the provocation and the day of temptation translate two Hebrew
words which are place names--Massah and Meribah. The whole is a
reference to the story told in Exodus 17:1-7 and Numbers 20:1-13.
These passages tell of a rebellious incident in the pilgrimage of the
children of Israel. They were thirsty in the desert and railed against
Moses, regretting that they had ever left Egypt and forswearing their
trust in God. In the Numbers version of the story God told Moses to
speak to the limestone rock and water would gush forth. But Moses in his
anger did not speak to the rock; he struck it. The water came forth but
for this act of distrust and disobedience God declared that Moses would
never be allowed to lead the people into the promised land. "Very
certainly they shall not enter in to my rest," means, "Very certainly
they will not enter into the Promised Land." To wanderers in the desert
the Promised Land was the place of rest, and it was often called the
rest (compare Deuteronomy 12:9).
The point is that the disobedience and the distrust of Israel debarred
them from the blessings of God that they might have enjoyed.
The writer to the Hebrews says to his people, "Beware lest you
show the same disobedience and distrust of God that your forefathers
showed, and that you do not for that reason lose the blessings you might
have had, just as they lost theirs." In effect he says, "While there is
yet time, while you can still speak of 'today' give God the trust and
the obedience that he must have." For the individual "today" means
"while life lasts" and the writer to the Hebrews is saying, "While you
have the chance, give God the submission you ought to give. Give it to
him before your day closes." There are certain great warnings here.
(i) God makes men an offer. Just as he offered the Israelites
the blessings of the Promised Land, he offers to all men the blessings
of a life which is far beyond the life that men can live without him.
(ii) But to obtain the blessings of God two things are
necessary. (a) Trust is necessary. We must believe that what God says is
true. We must be willing to stake our lives on his promises. (b)
Obedience is necessary. It is just as if a doctor were to say to us: "I
can cure you if you obey my instructions implicitly." It is just as if a
teacher were to say: "I can make you a scholar if you follow my
curriculum with absolute fidelity." It is just as if a trainer were to
say to an athlete: "I can make you a champion if you do not deviate from
the discipline that I lay down." In any realm of life success depends
on obedience to the word of the expert. God, if we may put it so, is the
expert in life and real happiness depends on obedience to him.
(iii) To the offer of God there is a limit. That limit is the
duration of life. We never know when that limit will be reached. We
speak easily about "tomorrow" but for us tomorrow may never come. All we
have is today. Someone has said: "We should live each day as if it were
a lifetime." God's offer must be accepted today; the trust and the
obedience must be given today--for we cannot be sure that there will be a
tomorrow for us.
Here we have the supreme offer of God, but it is only for
perfect trust and full obedience, and it must be accepted now--or it may
be too late.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)