Christ is greater than Moses and Joshua
3
📚Therefore 📖, holy 📖 brethren, sharers in the heavenly calling 📖, consider the Apostle 📖 and High Priest 📖 of our confession, Christ Jesus, 2 📚who was faithful to him who appointed him, as Moses also was faithful in all his house. 3:2 Both Moses and Jesus were faithful – Num 12:7; John 8:28-29; 17:4. “House” means the household of God, God’s people.⚜
3 📚For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, since he who has built the house has more honour than the house. 4 📚For every house is built by someone, but he who built all things is God.
3:3-4 Moses was a part of the household of God, but the Lord Jesus is the one who created it. So obviously Jesus is far superior to Moses.⚜
5 📚And Moses as a servant was indeed faithful in all his house, as a testimony to those things which were to be spoken afterwards, 6 📚but Christ as a son over his own house; whose house we are 📖, if 📖 we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.
3:1-6 Christ is greater than Moses. Moses was a servant in God’s house, but Jesus was God’s Son over the house.⚜
3:5-6 The Son over the house is in a far superior position to a servant in the house. Moses spoke of things to be “spoken afterwards”. That is, he pointed to a further revelation of truth from God (compare Heb 10:1). Christ is the one of whom Moses testified – Luke 24:27; John 5:46. Why does the writer show Christ’s superiority to Moses? Moses is the representative of the old covenant of law; Jesus is the founder of the new covenant of grace. The writer will later show that the new is far superior to the old (Heb 8:6-13). Here he shows the new is superior because of its Founder.⚜
THE SECOND WARNING: Do not be disobedient or unbelieving
7 📚Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says 📖,
Today 📖 if you will hear his voice,
8 📚do not harden your hearts,
as in the provocation 📖,
in the day of testing in the desert,
9 📚when your fathers tested me,
proved me, and saw my works forty years 📖.
10 📚Therefore I was grieved 📖 with that generation,
and said, They always go astray 📖
in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.
11 📚So I swore in my wrath 📖,
They will not enter my rest 📖.
12 📚Watch 📖, brethren, so that there may not be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God, 13 📚but encourage each other daily, while it is called “today”, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
3:13 Christians should constantly encourage other Christians to really believe God and go on believing, and to avoid sin. This can be an instrument in God’s hands for much good. Observe two facts about sin. It hardens men’s hearts against God, and it is deceitful (2 Thess 2:10). Sin likes to present itself as something pleasant rather than the ugly thing God says it is. It tries to appear as honey rather than the poison it really is. It speaks of pleasures but is quiet about the wages it pays (Rom 6:23), and God’s anger against it (Rom 1:18).
Sin is one of the three deceitful powers that make men blind and keep them in the broad way which leads to destruction. For the other two see Jer 17:9; and Rev 12:9. When the great deceiver Satan uses deceiving sin in man’s deceitful heart, is there any limit to the possibilities of deception?⚜
14 📚For we have become sharers with Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence firm to the end;
3:14 Verse 6. Observe carefully these verbs. We have become sharers in Christ (past tense – not “we will become sharers) if we hold our confidence in Him firm to the end (speaks of the future). If we have come to share in Christ – the future cannot abolish an actual event in the past. It can only confirm it. It can reveal whether we have really come to share in Christ or not. The writer is defining the true people of God – they share in Christ and prove it by continuing to believe. Faith will be tried, its profession will be tested. The genuine believer will appear by his perseverance in the faith. It is not enough to make some sort of beginning as a Christian. We must go on believing till the end. Real believers do this. Apostates do not, because the faith they professed to have is not genuine (compare Heb 10:35-39; Rom 5:9-10; John 10:27; 17:11-12; Luke 22:31-32; 1 John 2:19).⚜
15 📚while it is said,
Today if you will hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts,
as in the provocation.
3:15 Hardening the heart and rebelling against God is evidence of an unbelieving heart.⚜
16 📚For some, when they had heard, did provoke God; however not all 📖 that came out of Egypt 📖 by Moses. 17 📚But with whom was he grieved forty years? Was it not with those who had sinned, whose dead bodies fell in the desert?
3:17 Verse 10; 1 Cor 10:1-12; Eph 5:6; Col 3:6. The writer is warning of the possibility that the Hebrews of his generation too might face the wrath of God. It was essential for them to believe and obey God’s revelation in Christ.⚜
18 📚And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who refused to believe 📖? 19 📚So we see that they could not enter because of unbelief.
3:7-19 These verses give the second warning against apostasy. Verses 7-11 are taken from Ps 95:7-11. See notes there. They show that a whole generation can profess to be the household of God and yet be guilty of unbelief and fail to receive the blessing God promised to give to those who believed (v 19). If it happened once it can happen more than once.⚜
3:12-19 The writer applies the words of Ps 95:7-11 to the situation among the Jews in his day. We may well apply it to the situation in the churches in our time. The warning is against unbelief among those who are called God’s people.⚜