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About Jesus - Steve Sweetman Hebrews 3 and 4 Previous Section - Heb. 1 and 2 Jesus
Greater Than Moses (ch. 3:1-6) The
main topic of this letter continues in chapter three, and that is that
Jesus is greater. In this
instance the writer says that Jesus is greater than Moses.
Once again, like Abraham, Moses was well respected by the Jews as
the one who gave them the Law. Now
this writer is saying that Jesus is greater than Moses as well. “Therefore
holy brothers ...” is how he opens verse one.
These brothers are holy only because of one reason and that is
because Jesus has made them holy by His supreme sacrifice.
This will be expounded on later in greater detail. The
writer continues and says, “who share in the heavenly calling, fix your
eyes on Jesus”. We share in
one calling. This one calling
is to come to Jesus and then in turn represent Him to the world.
Each one of us may have different parts to play in expressing this
calling, but we all share in the same calling.
“Fix your eyes on Jesus” is significant in the fact that these
Jewish people have been taught to fix their eyes on the Law of God. This
writer is now saying to shift their attention from the past and fix their
eyes on Jesus. Why
should these people look towards Jesus?
Because He is “the apostle and high priest whom we confess”.
In this letter we will see that Jesus is called and referred to by
many titles. We have seen that
He has been called the high priest in the last chapter, as well as in this
verse. (ch. 3:1) He is also
called an apostle here as well. Of
course, you might say that He is the original apostle of God.
Remember that the word apostle means “one who is sent”.
Jesus Himself was sent by God, and He was the original
one to be sent by God to share this new gospel to the world. In
verse 2 the writer says that Jesus was “faithful” to the one “who
sent Him, just as Moses was faithful in all of God’s house”.
The comparison between Moses and Jesus begins.
The Jews recognized that Moses was a faithful servant.
They now need to understand that Jesus was faithful as well. In
verse 3 the writer makes a major statement. He says that “Jesus has been
found worthy of greater honour than Moses”.
This may be a hard saying for these people to accept, but if they
can’t get over this fact, there is no use going on in the discussion.
Jesus is greater than Moses. If
these people refuse to believe this, then salvation cannot be found for
them. It
is said here of Moses that he was “ a faithful servant in God’s
house”. Yet Moses was a
servant. Jesus is a servant
too, yet He is far more. He is
the builder of the house. He
is both builder of the house and servant in the house.
Therefor the builder has to be more important than anyone living in
the house. The house here
refers to God’s house, the family of God. In
verse 4, by saying that “God is the builder of everything”, including
His family, is suggesting that Jesus is very much a part of God.
Jesus and God are being used interchangeably here.
This is just another notation the writer makes to state the
importance of Jesus. Once
again, this speaks to the Deity of Christ. In
verse 5 the writer says that Moses testified “of what would be said in
the future”. Here we get to
see that Moses and the Law was more than a list of rules.
Moses and the Law were prophetic, just as prophetic as any of the
prophets. What the Law and
Moses testified to was Jesus Himself.
Jesus was the one who would come that would bring salvation to the
world, that which the Law foretold. Verse
6 specifically says that “we are God’s house”.
No longer is there any need for a building, or a temple.
The temple of the Old Testament also was
symbolic and prophetic of something better to come.
The temple was symbolic of us, who are the dwelling place of the
living God. We as individuals
have the Holy Spirit living in us, so we can say on an individual bases
that we are the Warning
Against Unbelief (Ch. 3:7-19) Verse
7 begins with the words, “as the Holy Spirit says”.
The writer is about to quote a Psalm. He is saying that although
there was a human author to this Psalm, in reality, it is the very words
of the Holy Spirit. The
prophetic warning to Israel
of old was not to harden their hearts.
Moses was faithful to God in leading Note
this negative promise of God. We
often think of God’s promises as being positive, something good to look
forward to. Not this time.
God promised these people that they would not get what He
originally promised. God was very angry at His people.
Why was He angry? He
was angry because of their unbelief. I
believe that God does not like it when we sin, but I strongly believe that
what really makes Him angry is unbelief, or
not trusting Him, or rejecting Him and His provisions.
This is what really gets God upset.
This will be demonstrated on that Day of Judgment. He will
separate the sheep from the goats on the basis of what they did with His
provision of salvation. “See
to it … that none of you
have a sinful, unbelieving heart”, is the words the writer uses to open
the next paragraph. He has
just related the story of Old Testament In
verse 14 the writer is talking about “holding on to the end”, and
“keeping the confidence that they had at the start”.
This was a problem with the people this letter was written to.
It is a problem with most people.
Keeping our fervor, our trust in Jesus throughout our life seems
hard for many. Not all who
start this new life actually finish it.
It is the one who finishes the race that gets the prize.
If we fall back and loose our trust in Jesus, and reject Him, we
will not share in anything of His. We
will loose our salvation. Once
again the writer refers back to an Old Testament Scripture and says,
“today if you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts…” (ch.
3:15) Really, this is part of
the message of the gospel. It
is “today”. If you hear
His voice calling you, don’t delay until tomorrow.
There may not be a tomorrow.
Respond “today”. It
could be a call to salvation that He is speaking to us about, or it could
be a call to do something for Him. Whatever He calls us to do, we should
not put if off to a future time. In
verse 16 the question is asked. “Who were they who heard and
rebelled”? The answer is,
“those who Moses led out of Egypt”. The rebellious people,
those with the hard hearts were God’s people.
These were people who had been saved from the Egyptians.
The warning the writer directs his comments to were saved people as
well. The readers of this
letter were Christians. The
next question that the writer asks is, “with whom was He angry…"?
We have the same answer. God
was angry at His people. Yet
another question is asked, “who did God swear that would not enter into
rest?” Once again, the
answer is God’s people. The
writer closes this chapter by saying that God’s people of
old did not enter into the rest they were promised because of their
unbelief. This is the key to
any promise that God makes to us. The
only way in which we can receive the promise is by trusting Jesus to
deliver it. If we harden our
hearts because it does not happen right away, we can be guaranteed that we
will not receive the promise. Why
is this so? Because getting
upset with God is not trusting. You cannot be mad at Jesus and fully trust
Him at the same time. One
thing I think we should note here is that God was upset with the Jews in
the Old Testament. He told
them that they would not enter the rest.
Yet when we put this in context of the Abrahamic Covenant and other
prophetic promises, God will eventually bring His people into rest at the
end of this age. These
Jewish people to whom the author of Hebrews was writing to was in the
process of thinking of giving up. They
were in the process of doing the same thing their ancestors did centuries
ago. The writer was pleading with them not to give into the human tendency
to harden their hearts. Unless
we are careful, human tendency is to let life’s difficulties sink us
down into unbelief, and let our trust fall by the wayside. Part
of the point that the writer is making here is that if God got angry at
His people in Old Testament times, He certainly can get angry at His
people in New Testament times. In
verse 17 the writer says that those rebellious people’s bodies died in
the desert. I believe the
point can be made about Christians and churches today.
God will let churches
die in their desert if they reject that faith they once held. I believe we
are seeing this truth take place in front of our eyes today.
Many so-called churches are dying in their desert today because
they have forsaken the truth of the gospel. A
Sabbath Rest For The People Of God (ch. 4:1-13) Chapter
4 continues on in the same thought, that is, being sure that we enter into
God’s rest. To make sure, we
need to understand what the “rest” is that the writer is talking
about. The Old Testament
verses that have been quoted said that Israel
did not enter into their promised rest because God was angry at them.
What “rest” did they not enter into?
The rest was the promised land.
God promised them a geographical piece of land where they could be
free from their enemies and enjoy rest from war.
Here, in this land they would experience a good measure of
prosperity. The
question remains for us today then, what is “God’s rest” for us as
New Testament people, since in chapter 4 verse 1 it says that “entering
into His rest still stands”?
I believe “God’s rest” is our salvation.
In verse 3 it says that “we who have believed enter that rest”.
The way to enter into rest therefore is to believe, have faith, or
trust in Jesus. When we think
of trusting Jesus, we think of salvation in all of its varying aspects.
What
then do we rest from? We rest
from our own works. Nothing
that we do, no matter how hard we work at it, can bring us salvation.
Therefore we depend solely on Jesus, thus resting from our own
works. Therefore
the writer continues in verse 1 to admonish these people to make sure they
“don’t fall short”. Both
Jews of old and Jews in the first century had the gospel preached to them,
but the “message they heard was of no value to them, because those who
heard did not combine it with faith”.
The combination of hearing the gospel and believing it produces
salvation. Hearing the gospel
alone does nothing. It is of
no value. But for those of us
who believe, or trust Jesus do receive salvation, or “enter into God’s
rest”. At
this point, for the third time, the writer quotes Psalm 95:11 where it
says that God made an oath in His anger that those people would never
enter His rest. Once again the
author of this letter is stressing the point that if God could be angry
with His people back then, He can be angry with His people now.
It is those particular Jews in Old Testament times that God would
not allow to enter into His rest, but as Paul says in Romans 11, there is
a remnant of Jews that will be saved.
I believe those Jews will enter God's rest at the end
of this age. The
writer continues by saying, “yet His work has been finished since the
creation of the world”. By
these words we are back to the Garden of Eden.
In creation God worked, Yet on the seventh day He rested from all
His work, because His work was completed.
God’s intent for man was that man should have entered into this
seventh day rest with God. Yet
man did not enter this rest because of his act of rebellion.
When it comes right down to it, man did not believe what God
promised. As a result, God
told man that he could not enter into His rest. Yet
in verse 6 the writer of this letter says that some will enter into this
rest. That is to say, that
there still is a rest for us to enter into.
God may not allow us to enter the rest that He originally intended
for us, but there is a rest that He has for us today.
Once again, this rest is our salvation, which is in one sense
partially realized now and will be fully realized at the return of Christ.
In
chapter 3 and 4 of Hebrews the author seems quite wordy and repeats
himself many times. Thus in
the next few verses he repeats the point that
the people of old failed to enter God’s rest due to their
disobedience. Just
to clarify things, the author makes sure that his readers understands that
just because Joshua did finally get the people into the promised land,
that was not really the rest that God intended for His people either.
He backs up his point by saying, that if this had of been the case,
why did God say in David’s day, centuries later, that there still is a
rest for God’s people. Therefore
in verse 9 the writer says, “that there remains a
Sabbath rest for the people of God”.
Concerning
Joshua and the Jews of his day, those people never did inherit , or get
the all the land that God promised to the Israel
in the Abrahamic Covenant. This
might well be another reason why God said that In
verse 10 the point of us not working for our salvation is made clear.
It says, “anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from His own
works”. This is the message
of the gospel. This reminds me
of Rom. 4:5. It says, “the man who does not work, but trusts God who
justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness”.
Once again, the point of salvation to be made here is that there is
nothing we can do, no matter how hard we work at it, can bring salvation
to us. Salvation here is
spoken of in terms of us being
righteous, that is, us being perfectly right in the essence of who we are,
not just what we do. In
verse 11 the author basically says that if we are to work hard, it is to
work hard at making sure we don’t fall short and disobey with an
unbelieving heart. This work
is not for our salvation. This
work is to make sure we really do trust Jesus alone, and nothing else. At
this point I would like to summarize what
the writer has said about rest, because he has actually spoken about more
than one rest. In verse 4 he
speaks of God resting from His work on the seventh day.
Then in verse 3 and the last half of verse 4 he speaks about the
rest the Jews were to enter with Moses after their escape from Egypt, but
didn’t. Then in verse 8 he
mentions Joshua bringing the Jews into the promised land.
Then in verse 9 he speaks about another rest for the New Testament
people. It sounds a little
confusing doesn’t it. There
are basically three rests described here.
One, God’s rest on the seventh day,
two, a rest for Israel
in the promise land, three, a
rest for New Testament people. In
the first two instances man failed to enter into the rest God provided.
But don’t give up, the
writer says, because there still remains a rest for you today.
To put it simply, this
rest is our salvation. When we
trust Jesus with our lives, we stop working for our salvation, and trust
Him alone.
Verse
12 is a well know verse. The
NIV puts it this way. “For
the Word of God is living and active.
Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing
of soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and
attitudes of the heart”. There
is a lot in this verse. The
Word of God is said here to be “living and active”.
The writer has been quoting from Old Testament Scriptures where God
has spoken to His people in the past.
But here he is saying that even today, God speaks to His people for
His word is living and active. God’s
word is alive today and is active in the sense that He is still speaking.
Even today, God’s Word is active in the proclamation of the good news.
If this is the case then, those who hear must receive the message
with faith or else it will be of no effect to them.
God’s
Word, that is, the things God’s says
is so powerful that it gets right into the core of who we are.
It separates the soul and spirit within us.
It gets right into the joints and marrow of our bones.
God’s Word can get into a life more than any other words spoken
by any other person. His Word can get right into us and “judge the
thoughts and attitudes of our hearts”.
This is what the New Testament is all about.
That is, our life as Christians begin with the thoughts and
attitudes of our hearts. This
is where God wants to work within us.
He knows if He can get into our thought and attitude life, He can
change the way we live. All of
our outward actions are a result of the thoughts and attitude of our
hearts. Long before we
verbally hurt someone, we have been thinking such thoughts in our hearts.
The Old Testament dealt with external sins.
The New Testament thinking is to deal with the internal sins,
knowing that if the internal sins can be dealt with, the outwards sins
will not be a problem. Verse
13 carries on with the thinking of internal sins.
God sees everything. He
sees every thought, every feeling of the heart of man.
Nothing can be covered over. Nothing
can be hidden from God, so there is no use trying to hide from God.
Yet so often we act as if no one can see into the thoughts and
attitude of our hearts. This
is far from the case. God sees
everything, and someday He will speak to us about it all.
What will our response be on that day? The Old Testament, that
is, Jewish culture, sees man as "a living soul". (Genesis 2:7 in
the KJV) The NIV uses the term
"living being". God
created us as a "soul" according to the creation account.
That suggests that all of who we are is a "soul",
including our bodies. All that being said, what
does Hebrews 4:12 mean? The
writer says that God's Word "penetrates, even to dividing soul and
spirit, and joints and marrow". In
general I believe what is meant here is that God's Word can, and should be
allowed into the very fabric of who we are to bring change according to
His Word. We underestimate the
power of God's Word these days more than ever.
That is to our detriment, because God's Word can
literally get right into our bones and the thoughts of our hearts. In more specific terms,
the verse says that God's Word separates soul from spirit as well as
getting into our bones and into our thought life.
This would reflect the Greek way of viewing soul and spirit in my
thinking. If you hold to a spirit, soul, and body make-up of man, you
probably, as most people do, believe that soul is comprised of our
emotion, will and intellect. Spirit
is that part of us that is united with God at salvation.
The verse appears to suggest that God's Word will divide, separate
the soul from the spirit. Why it would separate something that already
appears separate, I don't know. I'm
not convinced that the author of these words meant for us to get this
specific, although I could be wrong. Even
if I were fully convinced of spirit, soul and body, I think the line
between spirit and soul is pretty blurred. I tend not to think of
this verse in specific terms, but in general terms.
Therefore, I believe the verse is simply saying that God's Word, if
it is allowed to, can reach into our soul, our spirit, our bones, and our
thoughts – all of who we are. It
can penetrate who we are more than anything else can, which shows us how
important His Word is. Part of the reason for
stating verse 12 is found in verse 13.
Verse 13 states that God sees everything within a man.
Nothing can be head from Him. He
sees into our soul and spirit, our thoughts, our heart, and everything
else that is who we are. He
sees all these things, so we might as well accept that and submit to His
Word, thus this is what I think verse 12 is all about.
Jesus
The High Priest (ch. 4:14-5:10) Once
again in verse 14 the writer admonishes the readers “to hold firmly to
the faith they profess”. Words
don’t necessarily mean a lot at times. We can profess faith, but do we
act out our faith? We say that
we trust Jesus, but do our actions show this trust?
Why do we need to hold strongly to our faith?
The answer is that Jesus is our high priest and He has gone “into
heaven”. He now stands
before God on our behalf, interceding for us as high priest. This can be
seen clearly in Rom. 8:34 where it says that Jesus, “intercedes for
us”. We
read again in verse 15 that Jesus was tempted in every way that we can
possibly be tempted. There is
no temptation that He has not been tempted with.
This may be hard to picture, but Jesus was tempted in every way.
Yes, the Son of God was tempted into a life of immorality.
He was tempted to cheat and to lie.
He was tempted to kill and to steal.
Yet He did not give into any such temptation.
This means that even though He is God, He understands with all
certainty our temptations that come across our paths on a daily basis.
“He can sympathize with us”, as the writer says.
The
writer tells us to “approach the throne of grace with confidence”.
The important point to note here is that the confidence that we
have should not be based in our own human effort.
Such confidence has no place in our attempt to come to the throne
of God. Our confidence is in
Jesus and what He has done on our behalf.
This is the only way in which we can stand before the God of this
universe. This will always be
the only way in which we will ever be allowed to stand before God, both
now and forever into eternity. It
is a privilege to be able to stand in a spiritual sense now, and in
reality later, before our God. We,
in our time of need, can be assured that our God will hear us as we stand
before Him. We can be
confident of this fact. We
don’t have to shrink back and not ask for His help and grace when we
need it. He is there for us.
The
writer, in chapter 5 verse 1 continues on to explain that “every high
priest is selected from among men and is appointed to represent them in
matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins”.
This is the duty of a high priest as seen in Old Testament days.
These high priest were all regular men, like you and I.
Because of this these priests can “deal gently with those who are
ignorant and are going astray”. The
high priest is subject to the same short comings of the people they
represent before God. Therefore
when it comes to sacrifices, he is sacrificing for his own sins as well as
the sins of the people. Verse
4 says that the job of being a high priest is a calling.
One “is called of God”. This
calling is a serious calling, one that is not taken lightly.
In the same way, “Christ did not take upon himself the glory of
becoming a high priest”. God
called Jesus to be such a high priest, therefore the writer quotes, “you
are a high priest forever”. This
means that Jesus will always be in one sense of the word a high priest.
I don’t fully understand this, and why we would need a high
priest in eternity, but the fact remains that this calling is an eternal
calling. For all eternity we
will see Jesus as high priest and we will be ever reminded of the great
sacrifice He made for us. Verse
7 is interesting. It tells us
that “while on earth, Jesus offered up prayers and petitions with loud
cries and tears…” There is
a difference between general prayers and petitions, or supplications as
some translate it. Petitions
are more “need based”. You
are petitioning God for something that you need, or something that someone
else needs. The actual Greek
word used in Heb. 5:7 has connections with the Greek word that would be
used to “hold out an olive branch”.
Thus we get the phrase “holding out an olive branch” when
attempting to deal with someone, to make peace with someone in order to
receive something from that person. We
see Jesus pictured here with much emotion.
He cries out with loud cries and tears.
The writer says that He was crying out to the one who could save
Him from death. Well, in one
sense of the word Jesus did not get saved from death.
He suffered death in all of its aspects. Yet He did not stay dead,
and therefore God heard His prayer. Jesus
“offered up prayers and petitions”, plural, that is to say more than
one prayer and petition. God
heard Him. Why did God hear
Jesus? Because of “His
reverent submission.” Jesus
reverently submitted Himself to God. He
in loving fear, gave Himself fully to His father.
The
next verse needs a little thought given to it.
It says that “Jesus learned obedience by the things He
suffered”. Does this mean
that Jesus was disobedient? I
don’t think so, but we do know that He was tempted to be disobedient.
Therefore through His sufferings, He learned what it meant to obey.
He was tempted to disobey in those sufferings, and take the easy
road, but He didn’t. Thus He
learned the lesson of obedience. Remember
in chapter 2:10 we talked about Jesus being made perfect.
Well the same point appears here in verse 9 where it says, “once
being made perfect He became the source of eternal salvation”.
We should not think that Jesus was never less than perfect.
The word perfect in this sense means “complete”.
He became complete in who He was, that is Saviour of the world.
His completion of His task and His completion of who He was
finished on the cross. When
Jesus cried out while on the cross, “it is finished”, He meant all was
finished to offer salvation to the world.
He meant that He, in Himself was a complete person since His task
for existing on earth was over. Verse
9 says that eternal salvation is given “to all who obey Him”.
What obedience is required by this verse?
It is the obedience of
faith. It is responding to
God’s command for us to trust Him for all things, including our
salvation. This is the
obedience required here. Any
subsequent obedience to follow in His ways, is secondary to the obedience
of faith.
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