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The Book of Hebrews Part 17

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3:3 For he has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, because he who built the house has more honor than the house. 4 For every house is built by someone; but he who built all things is God.

“This man” is the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus, whom the writer has asked us to consider in the first verse of this chapter. The writer has already shown Him to have more glory than the angels, now he says that He has more glory than Moses. Using the illustration of a house (which can also mean a household or family), he does this in two ways. Firstly, he shows that Christ has greater glory as the builder of the house compared to the house itself. Then, in verses 5 and 6, he goes on to show that Christ has greater glory as the Son in the household compared to a servant.

The writer does not in any way seek to detract from the glory of Moses. He does not suggest that the Jews are wrong to give Moses the honour that they do, or that Moses is unworthy of that honour. He simply states that Christ has greater glory and is worthy of greater honour.

There are many beautiful buildings in the world that people greatly admire – from the ancient pyramids and Colosseum to modern architectural marvels like the Eiffel Tower and Sydney Opera House. Each, however, was designed and built by someone. Not one of them built itself, or came together simply by chance. Nor is any of them given credit for its beauty or function. Each is only a reflection of the intelligence and ability of the one who designed it.

The house here in verse 3 may be Moses himself. Moses had a place of great honour among the Jews. At the time when he came down from receiving the Law from the hand of the Lord on Mt Sinai, he was so saturated with the glory of God that it was necessary to put a veil over his face. Yet for all that, his honour and glory was only second-hand. Had it not been for the hand of God upon his life, Moses would have grown up as just another downtrodden slave among all the slaves of Egypt – that is, if he had survived Pharoah’s decree that all the baby boys be thrown in the Nile. The only reason for Moses’ glory and honour was God, who both created him in the first place and “made” him as the deliverer and leader of Israel.

It is also possible that the house refers to the nation of Israel as constituted under Moses, its earthly head. Israel was a great nation, and could point to many glorious victories in battle. More than that, they were the chosen people of God, the place where He had chosen to dwell on earth. This pride in their position was the very thing that led many Jews, even after they had found the Messiah, to shun the gentiles. Yet Israel, too, was both created and made by God. It was God who gave His promise to Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, and God who fulfilled that promise with the miraculous birth of Isaac. It was God who had brought the slave people out of Egypt and molded them into a nation under Moses. Without God, they would have been just a scattered handful of tribes among all the other tribes of the day. The only source of Israel’s glory and honour was God.

Christ, on the other hand, was glorious in Himself, and honoured for and as Himself. He was not created, nor had anyone “made” Him as Saviour and Lord. More than that, it was He who had “built” both Moses and Israel.

Here again the writer emphasises the divinity of Christ. Everything and everyone is created by somebody. The house is created by the architect and builder. But the architect and builder are in turn created beings. At the beginning of the line of creation stands God. By presenting Christ as the builder who has greater honour than the house – whether we see the house as being Moses himself or the nation of Israel under Moses – the writer is clearly saying that Christ is God. As God, the creator of all things, He obviously has far greater glory, and is worthy of far higher honour, than any of His creation, including Moses.

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The Book of Hebrews Part 16

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THE BOOK OF HEBREWS – PART 16

3:2 who was faithful to him who appointed him, as also Moses was in all his house.

The writer here is quoting from Numbers 12:7, “My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all My house.”

The context of the quoted verse is particularly interesting and relevant to our study. Miriam and Aaron had rebelled against Moses, suggesting that they should get “equal billing” as far as the leadership of Israel was concerned, because God had spoken to them as well as to Moses. God tells them that, whilst His normal means of communicating with His prophets is through dreams and visions, He treats Moses differently. With Moses He speaks face to face, and verse 7 suggests that the reason for this is Moses’ faithfulness.

Moses’ position is based on his relationship with God. Because of that relationship, God has entrusted him with leadership within his “house” (ie the people of God.) Moses has been faithful in that leadership, discharging all his duties without wavering, and even going beyond what was required (as when he suggested that God should blot his name out of the book of life rather than destroy Israel for the sin with the golden calf – Ex 32:32). That faithfulness has led to God bringing him into an even more intimate relationship with Himself, and entrusting him with even more “state secrets.”

With that background, the writer lines up the faithfulness of Christ against the faithfulness of Moses. Moses was faithful over a small section of God’s “house” – the Nation of Israel. Christ was faithful over the far greater house, the whole of mankind and ultimately the whole of the universe. For all his faithfulness, Moses had to initially be prodded to accept the job, and a number of times stood at the point of quitting, though never actually giving up. Christ willingly embraced the Father’s plan of salvation for man and restoration of the Kingdom, and even at His darkest moment declared “not My will but Yours.” Moses was privy to some of God’s secrets – certainly more than any other prophet of his day; Christ was the Word of God, the One through whom those aspects of God’s character and works that could not be seen in the creation were revealed. Moses was willing to give his life for the people, but his life could never have been a sufficient atonement for their sin. Jesus did give His life for the world, and His life was totally sufficient. Moses had been faithful, Christ was infinitely more so.

… to him who appointed him …

Faithfulness in itself is only half the story. Faithfulness misplaced can be worse than useless. We have all heard of people who have been utterly faithful to a company – or perhaps even a church or a denomination – only to find that, when the crunch comes and the organization’s “bottom line” is better served without them, they have been dropped like a hot potato. We have known people who have been faithful to friends, family or spouses, only to find that the other party has found greener pastures on the other side of the fence. Perhaps we have even personally experienced such betrayals of our faithfulness.

On the other hand, some have faithfully laboured at a job or pursued a vision, only to find at the end of the day that they come up empty-handed, and realize that they should have been doing something else. As someone once said, there is no point in struggling to get to the top of the mountain only to get there and find that we are on the wrong mountain! It is vital that our faithfulness be to the right person, and to the right vision, or it counts for nothing.

Christ’s faithfulness was to “Him that appointed Him” – God the Father. He had come to save man, but He was not faithful to man: if He had been, He would have followed Peter’s admonition to avoid the Cross. He had come as Israel’s Messiah, but He was not faithful to Israel: if He had been, He would have obeyed all the laws of the Pharisees. His faithfulness was fixed on the Father, and on the Father’s will. Had it not been so, He could have been distracted by any of a thousand different voices, and in faithfully following them become unfaithful to the One who called Him and the task to which He was called.

This in turn meant that Christ’s faithfulness was effective, because He was faithful to the Faithful One. God the Father would never back down from His commitment to and through His Son.

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The Book of Hebrews Part 14

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2:17 Therefore he was obligated in all things to be made like his brothers, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people. v18 For in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.

Even though our English translations place these two verses at the end of the second chapter, they rightly belong with the thoughts being introduced in the third. The writer has completed his comparison of Christ with the angels, and has conclusively shown that He is superior to them in every way. Now he moves on to the primary theme of the book, Christ’s superiority in His priestly service. In this context He will compare Christ with Moses, with Joshua, with the Sabbath, with the Old Testament priesthood as a whole, and its sacrifices in particular, and with Melchisedeck.

Therefore he was obligated in all things to be made like his brothers

This first part of verse 17 acts as a bridge between the long argument in chapters one and two and what follows. For this reason … because as representative Man He was reclaiming all that God had originally given to mankind. For this reason … because He was to taste death for everyone. For this reason … because He was the Captain bringing many sons to glory. But also for this reason … that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest.

that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people.

Primarily, priesthood is about two things: access and representation. Under the Old Covenant, only the priests had access to God. The people could come into the outer court of the temple, but they could not enter into the temple proper, the Holy Place. That was for the priests alone. Yet even the priests could not enter into the inner sanctuary, the Most Holy Place. Only the High Priest had that privilege, and then only once a year, under cover of the smoke of the incense, and with a rope tied around his ankle so that if he were to die in the presence of the Lord, the other priests could pull him out without being killed themselves.

That was not how God had intended it to be. He had told the people of Israel, “Even though the whole world is Mine, you will be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:5-6) In other words, God wanted a nation of people who had free access to Him, and would truly represent Him to the rest of the world. The people, however, chose a second-hand relationship, and cut themselves off from the possibility of entering the presence of God. Part of Christ’s mission in restoring the world to the plan of the Father was to restore that access to the Throne of God. For Himself, He already had that access, and had done for all eternity. In order to restore that access to man, it was necessary for Him to be so totally identified with man that when He entered the Throne Room, we entered with Him. In our own sinful natures we could never enter the presence of the holy God, but in Christ we can enter freely.

There was really only one reason for the Old Testament priest to have access to God, and that was so that he could represent man before God, and God before man. Since God’s people had chosen not to have a face-to-face relationship with Him, someone else – the priest – had to represent them before Him, and to be His representative in their midst. As God’s representative, the priest was to teach the Law and ensure that the people understood their covenant obligations. He was also the one who enforced that Law – no “separation of Church and State” in those days! Even kings were subject to the enforcement of the Law by the priests, as is illustrated by the story of Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26.

As the people’s representative before God, the priest had to take the people’s prayers and petitions – and even their thanksgiving – to God through the sacrificial system. Most importantly, he had to carry the sins of the people, both those of individuals and those of the nation, before God, and ensure that those sins were “covered” by the blood of the animal sacrifices that were offered. That was the only way they could continue in their covenant relationship with God.

In order to be God’s representative, the priest had to be godly. Hence there were, for him, far more stringent restrictions on his lifestyle than there were for the common people. Yet no matter how closely the priest followed the requirements of the Law, he could never meet the standards of God’s holiness. The best that the best priest in Israel could ever hope to be was a partial and very imperfect representation of God. Christ, however, was not merely the perfect representation of God, but He was God: all the fullness of the deity in bodily form. (Col. 2:9)

In order to be man’s representative, the priest had to be human. Obviously, this was not a problem for the priests of the Old Testament. They were human. Whether or not they chose to acknowledge it, they were subject to all the same weaknesses, testings, trials and temptations as those whom they represented. Therefore, Christ also had to be fully human. He could not represent man unless He was one of us.

As God, Christ could only give us the Law. He could show us what God is like: His holiness, righteousness, justice, compassion, power, truth … But God had already revealed Himself, at least partially, to man, and man’s response had been to push Moses forward as a go-between. As God, Christ could not be the mediator between God and man, because man would simply have sought out another go-between to stand between himself and Christ.

As man, fully identified with us, He became the perfect mediator: able to enter the Throne Room and take us with Him, able to bring the perfect sacrifice – Himself – to provide full expiation, not merely covering, for our sins, able to restore the relationship between both individuals and the body of mankind and God.

For in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.

There is another aspect of Christ’s mediation. The priest of the Old Testament not only brought reconciliation between man and God, but between man and man. He was the settler of disputes and the dispenser of justice. For this role, it was a distinct advantage if he had lived a bit! If the priest had experienced trials, losses, struggles and heartaches, he was much more likely to be able to deal compassionately with those who came to him.

The word “testings” is translated in the KJV as “being tempted”, but the original word has a much broader application than simply the temptation to sin, relating more to a testing of character which may come through temptation as we normally understand it, or may come simply through the trials and difficulties of life. Undoubtedly, Christ knew both well.

It is difficult for us to comprehend that Jesus, who was God, could have experienced genuine temptation to sin, especially when we understand that for temptation to be real there must be the possibility of yielding. Yet Scripture makes it clear that such a possibility must have existed, otherwise His victory over sin would have been meaningless.

Perhaps we can understand it more readily if we consider that the greatest sin for Jesus would have been to walk away from His mission as Saviour and Redeemer. If we then think about His struggle in Gethsemane, when the full horror of what fulfilling that mission would cost broke upon Him, we can see something of the reality of temptation for Him. What caused Him to break out in a sweat of blood, and to plead desperately with the Father to take this cup from Him? Surely not just the physical trial that awaited Him, as horrific as that was. No, the sinless One suddenly comprehended the fullness of the sin of mankind that was about to be dumped upon Him. Yes, He had walked for thirty-three years in this sin-steeped world, He had seen sin in its ugliest – but that was only from outside. Now He was about to experience it from within: all the sewerage of man’s sin was about to be dumped over Him, so that it touched not only His body but the very depths of His soul. He was about to “become sin”, and though it is unlikely that any of us will ever, this side of heaven, fully comprehend what that meant, we can surely understand the power of the temptation to flee to the farthest reaches of the universe and beyond to avoid it.

We have salvation only because He overcame that temptation, and chose His Father’s will above the screaming of His body, soul and spirit. But beyond salvation, we have help, we have comfort. The temptation He felt that night was beyond any we will ever experience. He knows what temptation feels like, and is able to walk with us when we experience it. The emotion He knew that night was beyond any heartbreak, any fear, any horror that we will ever know. When we walk through those things, He is able to understand. The rejection, and the physical suffering, that were His portion, were beyond any we will have to walk through. He is able to help us when we go through trials.

Truly, He is a High Priest who has identified with us in the very depths of our experience and beyond.

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The Book of Hebrews Part 13

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2:14-15. Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Unlike angels, which are pure spirit and therefore cannot die, God created man with both a spiritual and a physical nature. Our bodies are not, as some people teach, merely a house in which our spirit lives (“man is a spirit who has a soul and lives in a body”), but rather an integral part of who we are. Each of us is one person who is spirit, soul and body, just as God is one God who is Father, Son and Spirit. That our bodies are an essential part of our nature is evidenced by the fact that at the end of time God will raise and transform them, and reunite them with our spirit/souls.

It is because our bodies are essential to our humanity that the Son of God had to come in a body. Had we been only spirits living in bodies, it would not have been necessary for Christ to take on a human body in order to identify with us. As an illustration, consider this: all people live in houses of one kind or another. Yet it was not necessary that Christ live in a house. He could have spent His life in the desert, sleeping under the stars, and still have been fully our Saviour. Although people live in houses, they are not essential to our nature, so Christ did not have to live in a house in order to identify with us. Our bodies, however, are essential to us, and He could not identify with us without taking on a human body.

It is our three-part nature that makes death possible. To understand this, we need to understand what death is. It is not non-existence. On the property where I live, there is a large dead tree. It is not non-existent. It is there – I can see it and touch it. On sunny days it casts a shadow, on rainy days it gets wet, and on windy days it sways back and forth. Over time, more and more branches are breaking off from it. One day, the whole tree will topple over, and eventually it will decay and disappear into the ground. When that happens, it will no longer be a dead tree – it will be part of the soil. As long as it is a dead tree, it still exists – but it cannot carry out any of the functions it had while it was a living tree.

So we see that death means to be existing but non-functional. When we are physically dead, the person still exists but his body cannot carry out the functions of a living body. We can also be “spiritually dead”, meaning our spirit cannot carry out its function of communication with God; or “emotionally dead”, as in a breakdown, when our emotions are incapable of carrying out their function of responding to our surroundings. All of this is possible because we are three-part beings – spirit, soul and body – so that we as a total being continue to exist even when part of us is not functioning.

For pure spirit beings, such as angels, there can be no death. If an angel could cease to function as an angel, it would cease to exist. (The devil and his minions are still angels, but their angelic functions are turned to the service of self rather than the service of God.) Therefore, no angel could have taken on the role of Saviour, because no angel could have died for our sin. For the same reason, Jesus did not come as an angel, but as a man, with the same death-capable physical body as every other human being.

that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil

In the garden, God told Adam and Eve that if they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they would die. By deceiving them into eating from that tree, the devil brought death upon them. They immediately died spiritually – their spirits were no longer capable of communication with God, as evidenced by the fact that they hid from Him, rather than looking for what had been, up until then, sweet communion. They also immediately began to die physically. The life-force which, if they had remained obedient, would have kept their bodies in perfect health and wholeness, was cut off from its source in God.

More than that, the devil’s deception – and Adam and Eve’s sinful acceptance of it – brought death on all mankind. They no longer had spiritual life, therefore they could not pass on spiritual life to their children; and they now had limited physical life, so could pass on limited physical life. Every child born from then on came into the world spiritually dead and physically dying.

Even beyond that, the position which the devil gained as the result of Adam and Eve handing their dominion of the world over to him gave him the power to bring death in a multitude of lesser ways. Through sin he had the power to bring death to relationships, death to dreams, emotional death, financial death. Every area in which man does not enjoy the fullness that God originally intended for us is an area of minor death, and results from either our own sin, the sin of others or the corporate sin of mankind.

Christ destroyed the devil not by annihilating him, but by stripping him of his power. Colossians 2:15 tells us that He disarmed principalities and powers, making open show of them through the Cross. By reversing the choices made by our first parents, Christ took back the dominion of the earth. By paying the death penalty for every person, He made it possible for life to be restored – spiritual life first, and ultimately physical life. He also made it possible for all the minor deaths in our experience to be replaced with His life. The devil’s power to bring death has once and for all been broken.

and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Christ’s victory would be meaningless if it could not be applied to the human heart. The innate knowledge of our own mortality, and the concern – even if unconscious – of what may follow death, lies behind every religious and legalistic bondage known to man. That fear has prompted man, even if unwilling to worship the true God, to create gods for himself. It has driven him to superstition and all kinds of occultic practices. Even in the worship of the true God, it has caused him to embrace a legalism that seemed to offer some degree of certainty.

By removing the sentence of death, Christ has removed the fear. By replacing death with His life, He has given us the ability to live in freedom.

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