048 - Consider Jesus

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, I've got a problem with today's passage. What? Well, they call Jesus an apostle. I thought Jesus had 12 apostles. He had apostles, but he was an apostle?

What does that mean? Yeah, the writer says he's an apostle. I think we need to get to the bottom of this today and see what this is all about.

Jesus is an apostle? Join us today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning. We are so glad you're with us.

It's a lovely summer morning. I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And as we sit at our dining room table here, we really, really do have our coffee cups in front of us. And we have our Bibles.

That's right. And I hope you have yours. We're glad you're joining with us. We are attempting, or at least we're enjoying it, to sit down and have nice leisurely but deep looks into God's Word. And you don't have to do it because you're forced to, or because it's a school assignment, or because you can do it just because you want to understand God's heart. Well, because Jesus said, the words that I speak to you are spirit of our life.

They do, yeah. Right? So we're here. So everything that's kind of burdening you right now, just relax and let's look at God's Word.

Set it down. Exactly. This is the best context ever to sit down and look at his Word. So we're into Hebrews right now, and Hebrews, again, is one of those books that people, that Christians many times just get sort of freaked out about. You know, it's like it's too big, it's too fat, it's too Hebrew-ish. How am I supposed to ever understand it? Well, it's too dense. It's very tightly reasoned. Yeah. And I don't want to think that hard.

I want my little spiritual vitamin for the day, and I want to just go away and think about my refrigerator magnet. Or something like that, I don't know. So it is a little bit of a work, a little bit, not much, but the truths that are here are so extraordinary. And there is one unfortunate thing that happens when many people just dive into Hebrews is they don't really understand Jewish culture very much, and that helps a lot, in fact. You have to be a little conversant in what's going on in the Old Testament. Well, yeah, more than culture, Old Testament history and the stories that God has recorded for us. Yeah, so hopefully we'll fill in some of those gaps as we go along, especially next week.

That'll be a gigantic issue, because we'll look at a historical event in the nation of Israel. But we lead up to that today as we come into chapter 3. Remember, when we left out of chapter 2 a couple weeks ago, he says, so look, you know, we have to pay much closer attention to what we've heard. And I've thought about that for years, and the issue he's talking about is the fact that you and I, you may have heard about Jesus. Say like you were taken to church in Sunday school or something like that. And you might culturally have said, well, so I'm a Christian because my parents brought me to church. Right, because I went to Sunday school as a kid, and I live in the United States. Yeah, so you hear the facts, but you know, you may not have really come into a position of real fellowship with God, a real beneficiary of God's love for you in that sense. So you could be like Israel at this time, which is they heard the truth, but never really quite sunk in what was going on. I think to some degree, the writer of Hebrews is saying, so look, you guys, we've got to consider this more carefully.

You might have missed it, you might have glanced away from it, but we just need to consider it clearly. And that consideration is in considering who Jesus is. Yeah, and that requires some thinking. You know, if you consider something, you're rolling it around in your mind.

I'm thinking, I'm actively thinking about it. And so that, you know, this whole beginning of this chapter three of Hebrews is a call to consider Jesus. For me, it's almost the beginning of the book. I mean, in chapters one and two, he's made a case for the fact of who Jesus is. He's bigger than angels, you know. Maybe you don't completely understand who he is, but we've made enough of a case that this is such a serious salvation, how we escape if we neglect it.

We need to sit down and just very seriously consider. In fact, that's how he starts off in chapter one. I'll just read the first verse, then you can read the rest. He says, so therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.

So that's what we're going to do. We're going to consider Jesus because it seems as though that issue about who Jesus is is central to you benefiting from God's plans for you. Well, and as we start to consider him, let's remember what we were told about him in chapter one, right? He's the living word of God. God has spoken to us and his son. He's the creator. He's the sustainer of everything he is. He's the outshining of God's glory.

The outshining, yeah. He's the one who purified our sin and then sat down at the right hand of God. He reigns over all. Everything will be subject to him. See, chapter one was dense in all of this stuff. Well, yeah, because it was like his conclusion of the entire book. Right.

Yeah, he makes claims. And so he's now going to begin to say, let's begin at the beginning to consider Jesus, to think about him. And right off the get-go in verse one, he says, the apostle and high priest of our confession.

Apostle? Well, let's circle back to that after. How far do you want me to read? Oh, I don't know.

I'll go a little bit. Okay. So, 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 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. You know, let's stop there. Okay.

That's a good place to stop. Okay. Why? Well, because we've said a lot already. And, you know, in the first chapter, the writer was primarily comparing Jesus to angels, but now he's going to open the book on Moses. Right. So, you know, so you think Moses is great, because that was always the thing that was under discussion in Jesus' ministry was that, you know, the religious authorities were always saying, well, we're sons of Moses and we have the law. And so they had elevated Moses.

Yeah, he was the top dog in Jerusalem. Right. Right. Oh, is God, is Jesus greater than Moses?

Right. So that's kind of where he's going to start here. He's got kind of the Jewish hall of fame. You got Abraham, you got Moses, and it's all down to that. Well, it's a really good, it's a good way of looking at it to say, you know, there's a house and there's a builder of a house.

Which one is worthy of more honor? Yeah. Right. And, you know, I did notice, because I was paying attention right here, that a word does repeat.

Yes. This word house. In fact, just out of curiosity, I counted it up, but we're only going to go to the first six verses this morning as we take a look. But it's mentioned five times. The only verse that does not use the word house is the opening verse.

Isn't that interesting? So house is an issue. So we sort of have to get our heads around what the ancient thinking of is house.

It's not just a building built out of two by fours and stuff like that. It's a broader kind of thing. And when I, when I begin to talk about this with people, I say, well, when you see the word house, think more household.

Okay. Yeah. And like for instance, a family lives in a house. Well, when the Jews or the ancient time, they talk about a house, you're really talking about a house of a family or an extended family. It's the people that make the house, not so much the structure. Well, and also the idea of a heritage.

Yes. Of your children and the next generations. Like we hear the reference to the house of David. We're talking about not just David and his immediate family, but everyone who was born of him. In fact, when Jesus is born, Mary and Joseph, it says Joseph is from the house of David. So you see, it's actually the legacy of the family that persists on. So when you think house, get bigger than just, you know, bricks and mortar.

Go large. Okay. So there's another repeated word and we didn't read all the way to verse six, which is as far as we're going today.

But in these first six verses, the word faithful shows up four times, two times in reference to Jesus and two times in reference to Moses. Yeah. Oh, so we're actually making a very active comparison. So this is an important study skill. Make note of the repeated words. It's important. And if you don't know what the words mean or how they're intended to be meant, do a little side story.

Side story, side study and find out what they are. You know, when I see the word faithful, I think of someone who just follows through with what they're going to say. They do what they say they will do. And we use that in common lingo.

And that's actually a pretty close connection to the ancient usage of it. You know, when God promises to do something and he does it, he's faithful because he follows through. When I ask someone to watch our dog while we're gone on vacation and I come back and they've done it, I say they've been faithful. So, you know, they promise and they carry through. So both Jesus and both Moses have been faithful. They've carried through with something and they've done it faithfully.

Okay. So we need to go back to verse one because we jumped right over the apostle and the high priest. Two things that the writer of Hebrews calls Jesus. Were you surprised when he said apostle?

Well, you know, maybe a long time ago I was. Not anymore because it shows up a couple other times in the book of Hebrews. So clearly he's using it in a term that's not just about the office of apostles, the 12 guys with Jesus. Well, that's the way we usually only use it, but it has a different meaning than that. So literally the word means to be a sent one, a sent forth, a representative who speaks in the authority of the one who sent you.

Right. So, yes, that applied to the 12, but here the writer of Hebrews is applying it to Jesus. The apostle, he's the sent one. Well, Messiah, the sent one. He's the sent one, yeah. So he's not only, in fact, you know, where is he sent from? Well, he's sent from God. We already know that he's the outstanding God. And when you see Jesus being called an apostle, you're seeing Jesus being sent into the world.

That's his mission statement. He comes into the world and does something, and he's faithful in carrying through with what that was. And last week we saw it was the fact that he had to die.

It was necessary and fitting for him to die, which is a completely new idea for Jews when we talk about Messiah. Well, and last week at the end of chapter 2 he opened the idea of the high priest. Yes, and here it is again. Who becomes like us.

And hold onto your seats, but this is going to keep coming back. This high priest. Yeah, he's just beginning to open the door on this high priest, right? Who is a one who holds the office through which sacrifices and prayers are offered and gifts are given. He, as we said last week, he represents God before the people, and he represents the people. He lifts up their prayers and their sacrifices to God. He's a mediator. He's a bridge between God and the people.

So consider carefully what he says at the outset. Think about this. Have you ever thought about this, that Jesus is the sent out one who is the mediator for mankind? And he's sent from God. From God. Isn't it Titus that says there's one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

Maybe that's not Titus. I forget. I forget. Okay, look it up. There you go. Look that up. Look up the word mediator in your concordance and you're going to find that verse.

But I think it's interesting. He says we need to consider Jesus in what way? In the way that he's actually an apostle.

He's a sent out one. He was sent here for a purpose, and he really dwelled on that in the last chapter. And he's doing something in a mediator role to mediate between us and God. So we need to consider those roles he has in all of this.

That's what we're going to consider now. And he was faithful in everything he was appointed to. Yeah, he carried through.

He carried through. Just like Moses was faithful in all God's house. Now, Moses was faithful. What was he faithful in?

He led the people out of Egypt. He gave them God's law when God said, here, tell them I said this. He built the tabernacle.

He interceded for the people. Moses stood between God and his people at that point in their history when they became a nation, not just a family anymore. So Moses was faithful in all God's house and what God was building in his people. And the writer says Jesus is faithful just like Moses. Yeah, so Moses carried through with his assignment from God for the benefit of the people of God, the Jews at the time, to be reacquainted with God.

So he did that. And Jesus in the same way but in a superior way does the same thing for us. He's kind of like Moses. And you remember in the last chapter he talked about the fact that he's the, depending on the version you read, he's the author of our faith.

Or I like the word captain. He's the one who leads the way. Well, that was Moses coming out of Egypt. He's out in front and he says, follow me. God's leading me.

This is where we're going. So in that same sense Jesus is like him in terms of bringing us out of a captivity, bringing us into a new place of God's promises. And that's Jesus as well. So his connection with Moses is really quite, it's a good one because for a Jew they know what Moses accomplished.

Indeed we would say, and the scripture says this is another place, that Moses was actually a type of Christ, right? An imprint, a pattern. Kind of like.

Something, a picture that shows you what something is like. Yeah. But if you think Moses was hot stuff. How much more is Jesus? Look at Jesus.

That's what we have to consider carefully. Jesus is much, much more. In the same way, let's go back to the house. The house or the household that's usually, you know, a household. In fact you talk about in the later life of the history of Israel, you talk about the house of Judah and the house of Israel, the two split kingdoms. I mean they're larger family, you know, extended families in a way.

They come from a single father in that same sense. Well here's God's house. Here's God's house where people are the children of God. The place that God builds. And so now we have God's house and you have Moses.

And it says what's Moses' role in God's house, in his household, God's family, what's his role? He's a servant. He's a servant in the family. That's okay.

That's totally fine. He's a servant for the benefit of those who are going to occupy the house with him. He's a servant in that.

But think about this, he says. He says that Moses, you know, he's a servant. He's counted worthy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was faithful.

Okay. Kind of worthy. Moses is a worthy servant.

Yeah, he's worthy. But Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, verse 3. As much more glory as the builder of the house has more honor than the house itself. The builder of the house is Jesus?

Yes. God himself. This house, this household, this extended family, which is what the house stands for, Jesus is the one who actually built the house. And if you remember, back in chapter 1 or chapter 2, it said that he would say to his brothers, right, that's us.

And he's sanctifying the many so that we may be like him. We're all from one source. That's the household.

The writer has already said all that thing. There's the household. That's the household. We all come from the same patriarch, as it were, in the household. It's the house of God. So our identity does not come from Moses. Our identity comes from the builder of the house.

The builder of the house himself. Or, you know, in some parables, Jesus talked about in these parables, servants of a house versus the son of the owner of the house and how much different that is. He's using exactly the same allusion here.

So that's the contrast. We need to read maybe verses 5 and 6 and get the rest of the passage in front of us. 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.

A son. And we are his house. What?

If indeed we hold fast our confidence and are boasting in our hope. We are his house. Okay.

That's the whole thrust, though. That's it. That's it. We are his house if indeed we do something.

Right. We hold fast. Hold fast our confidence and are boasting in our hope.

Boy, this is an idea. And that boasting is not boasting in us. No, no, no. It's boasting in the hope that God holds us. Okay, so that'd be an interesting word study.

Yeah. Take your concordance and look up boast. There's a lot of places where you're going to find it, but one of the most interesting ones is in Jeremiah 9 where he says, you know, don't be boasting in your wealth or in your status. Let him who boasts boast of this that he knows me. That is the boast passage in the Bible.

Yeah. And then Paul refers to the same thing at 1 Corinthians 1. So look those passages up and read about boasting because we think of boasting as a bad thing. But God says, no, if you're going to boast, which is to speak boldly about something, then make sure that it's real. It's only bad when you falsely elevate yourself. Right. Elevate yourself instead of God.

That's a whole different kind of selfish thing, but you can do that. So it's interesting. So here we have this house. It's the extended family of God, the household of God. It's a house that Jesus created, he built to start with. He's the son in the house, so he has a special status that none of the servants, like Moses.

Indeed. You say he's the owner of the house. He's the owner of the house, yeah. And we are participants in that house if we hold fast our confidence in boasting in our hope. So it turns out that the residents in this house and the family of God are there by virtue of them putting their confidence and their hope in God. It has nothing to do with bloodlines or anything else. Or name.

Or name or accomplishments or worthiness because of how many good works I did this week. Or even what building you find yourself in on a Sunday morning. Exactly. And that's why I come back to how I started this is it could very well be that you and you know growing up in the church thought we were Christians because we heard the truth. But we never really reacted in a way in which we put our confidence in God and we put our hope in God. And that's what actually, that's what puts you in the family of God into his household. It's a whole different thing. And that will show up, he'll bring up an awesome example next week about how that failure happens. You think you're part of the family, but you're not. Why? Because of a lack of confidence and hope in God.

Yeah, it's a real thing. So this is sort of a wake up call. So let's consider who Jesus is, the one who was sent out by God for a purpose and the one who is the high priest who's mediating on our behalf. Mediating for what? So that we can participate in the house of God.

In his household. He's actually creating that. He's not just a mediator, he's creating that house.

So that eventually we can say I'm part of the house of God. And he's the one we hold fast to. Exactly. So I heard this word hold fast and I looked it up and it's the same word they would use when they were talking about bringing a ship into shore.

Oh yeah. You cast your rope and somebody grabs it and begins to draw that ship in. Well, that's a picture that's going to come up again and again in Hebrews. But that set me thinking when we were talking in chapter two where the writer says, now don't drift. Don't drift. Don't neglect. There's that. Right? That's if you.

Nautical idea. That's right. So are you being drawn toward holding fast? Is somebody holding the end of the rope? Yeah.

Right? And that is Jesus. And why are we holding our end? Why are we holding our end? So that he can draw us in.

I love that picture. Hold fast our confidence. My confidence is not in the rope.

My confidence is in the one who's holding the end of the rope. Which is why you have to consider Jesus. Because if you don't squarely have figured out in your head who Jesus is, what are you holding fast to? You have to hold fast to something that's solid, and that's Jesus himself.

So he says here, look, you may have heard his name, but we need to really consider him and then hold fast with confidence to that hope. Because he is the immovable rock, the one whom God has placed. Jesus is the center of all of this. It's the center of all of this.

I like it too. I was thinking back to Peter and Peter's first letter in chapter two. He talks about us being living stones, being built into a spiritual house. And that's right after he talks about the fact that, well actually it's in the midst of where he talks about Jesus being the cornerstone. So you go back to the metaphor, building a house. Okay, we know the house here is actually the household, it's the extended family of God.

It's that kind of a thing. But Peter's saying, yeah, exactly. But this house is being built and Jesus himself is the cornerstone. He's the beginning of that building, which is kind of parallel to this. He's the builder of the house and the first stone that goes down.

We're back to the Kep and I days, the leading stone even. And then we are other stones that build the house. So when you walk up and look at the structure, people say, here's the house of God. What's the building materials of the house of God? The believers who hold fast and hope in their confidence.

So that's the house idea. It's a little ancient, but we can get it. We're good thinkers. So what are we holding fast to Jesus? Our confidence in who he is. Well the writer of Hebrews has given us so much information about who he is.

So here's another study skill I would encourage you to take up if you haven't started it already. We're only in the beginning of chapter three. So get a notebook and get a pen and go back to chapter one and just put into your own words short statements of all the things you have been told about who Jesus is. And begin that list and just keep adding to it as we go through and see how your understanding as you consider him, how your understanding grows.

Think about the implications of all those things. How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? And that neglect comes from forgetting who Jesus is or maybe not even knowing. So let's drill down into who is this Jesus?

Consider Jesus, the one who was sent out by God to be a mediator for us. It reminds me too, there was a spot where I think it's Matthew 15, the lost sheep, where he says, I was sent out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And so there you see him being sent out and sent out for the benefit of those who consider themselves in the house of God. They think they're in the house. And there's conflicts all through the New Testament where the Pharisees think they're in the house because they have Jewish blood, but they actually, you know, they don't.

They're not there. Well, we said this before that Paul says in Galatians and also in Romans, you know, that not everybody who is genetically descended from Abraham is Israel. True Israel are those who have the faith of Father Abraham, who believe God. That's what's reckoned as righteousness. Faith was his characteristic. That's the DNA that you have that makes you in common with Abraham, not the DNA of your blood.

It's a remarkably different thing. And that DNA that Abraham had his faith, he held fast to his confidence and who God was and what he was promising and his hope was in what God said. So that's how you find yourself a son of Abraham and hence in the house of God, the household of God. Well, we are running short on time. We only did six verses because that's about all we can take when we get into Hebrews 3.

Well that's enough. And as we press on in this chapter, we're going to spend a lot more time actually looking at the Old Testament stories, the Old Testament accounts that the writer references coming up. But this is important foundational information about Moses and comparing and contrasting are two really valuable means of studying something. You know, Jesus did it when he told the parables, he said the kingdom of God is like and then he gave a little picture. So you know, the writer so far has compared and contrasted Jesus, the son with angels and now he's begun to compare him with Moses.

And so that trajectory is going to go on over the next few chapters. And I might add as we're going on here that for a Jew, that's an easy kind of comparison because they've been schooled in who Moses is. For most of us Christians, unless you spend a lot of time in the Old Testament or you watch the Ten Commandments on TV or something like that, you know, you're understanding who Moses is, the whole parallel may not be as sharp as it could be is if you spent some time looking at it. So take a look at Moses. Go back to the life of Moses. You can find him.

Next week we'll talk more about where you can do that. But Moses is such a good comparison, a good type to give us easy insights into the role and nature of who Jesus is. But Jesus is clearly superior to Moses as much as the builder of the house is more superior than the servant that just serves in it. So that's why he's saying let's consider Jesus. It's about time we do that. We don't want to neglect who he is. So we need to pay much closer attention. So we don't drift. So we don't drift. So we don't forget who this one is and who we are as we cling to him. So if you're as excited as we are about considering Jesus more deeply, we'd love to have you be with us next week as we continue this. We're going to jump in in verse seven in chapter three so you can read ahead and you can see an actual case in which those who thought they were in the house of God were not because they did not hold fast to their confidence and the source of their hope.

They didn't do that and I got to tell you, it did not turn out well. They presume you make a presumption, you make a mistake and that's what happens in this section that we're going to look at next week. So I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we're glad you're with us. We hope that you're diving in with us as well. Understanding and considering Jesus is probably the most important thing we can do in our entire lives. Practicing holding fast to him. Holding fast to that confidence. And not being allowed, not allowing ourselves to drift. Exactly.

So keep doing that. Read ahead with us. Join us in the second half of Hebrews 3 and this is More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org.