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Well, as you consider and think
about various people in your lives, who is the greatest person
that you've ever known? Not the greatest person that
you have met, maybe, or seen, but that you really know. Who
would that be? The world may not recognize them
as being such a great person, but you know they are in your
life, or they were, maybe the greatest influence, the greatest
model, the greatest... Who is the... What makes them
great? What makes that individual great
to you? Well, certainly a part of their greatness is what they
maybe have accomplished, what they've done. But that's not
really the full measure of greatness, is it? I mean, you look up to
them for what they've done, but it's not really ultimately about
what they've done. It's more about who they are.
A person's greatness in the eyes of others is about who they really
are, their life and their character. And so in the Bible, when we
read about various people such as Abraham, and David, and Peter,
and Paul, and of course today Moses. But here in the book of
Hebrews the writer emphasizes the obvious that Jesus is the
greatest of all. That he's better, he's superior
to everyone and everything. Last week we saw how the book
began by telling us that God the Father has made himself known
in a variety of ways. But the best way was through
his son. Jesus is better. It's repeated all throughout
Hebrews. Today we read that Jesus is better than Moses. But it
is good to be reminded of the greatness of Moses. Who was he? Well, in a commentary by Kent
Hughes, a modern author I love reading, on this book of Hebrews,
He gave a really good summary in this chapter on the life of
Moses and reminds us of his greatness. And I'm just going to paraphrase
a bunch of it. But Moses was chosen by God, obviously for
an epic task, that would begin with a miraculous rescue from
the ruthless Pharaoh who was out to kill all the Israelite
babies. And just as God delivered Moses from the hands of Pharaoh,
God would then call Moses to deliver his people. And he became
a great prophet and lawgiver, we're told. The man that God
would use to record the first five books of the Bible, telling
the history of God's works on behalf of his people. And God
would use Moses to establish the tabernacle where God would
meet with man and man would meet with God. But as great as Moses
was, The Bible also describes Moses as the meekest man on the
face of the earth. The meekest man, the humblest
man. He was the greatest leader maybe
that Israel ever had. And yet he considered him nothing
in comparison to the greatness of our living God. All the glory
would be given to God by Moses. And so again, we see that a person
is considered to be great for so much more than merely what
he has done, but for who he is. Horrible people can accomplish
great things for the wrong reasons, but a great man accomplishes
great things for our great God and for the glory of God. Moses
sought the glory of God. But of course the emphasis in
this passage is not on the greatness of Moses, recognizes that, but
the emphasis is on the greatness of Jesus. The writer says, consider
Jesus. Now that's a preacher's way of
saying, you know about the greatness of Moses, but let's talk about
Jesus. Let's think about Jesus for a minute. When we use the
word consider, we normally mean that we'll think about it, but
we're really not that serious about it. For example, if I ask
you, do you want to go bowling? And you tell me, well, I'll consider
it. I know, I'm going bowling alone. You're not really that
interested in it, the way we use that word typically today.
But here in this context, when he says, consider Jesus, it means
fix your attention upon Jesus. Concentrate on him. Fix all your
thoughts upon him. Consider Him. Concentrate on
Him. It requires your heart, your
mind, your strength, everything about you is going to be focused
upon Him. The psalmist said it many ways
in various psalms, but listen to what David said in Psalm 27
4. One thing have I asked of the Lord, that I will seek after,
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, all the days of
my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in
his temple." The heart's desire of David, his greatest longing,
was to dwell in the presence of God so that he can gaze upon
his beauty and inquire in his temple. The word inquire means
to consider. to inspect or look deeply into
it, to truly understand who God is and what He requires of man. I want to know Him. I want to
know Him and to constantly get to know Him better. That's also
in this word that the writer of Hebrews uses, consider Jesus.
It's not just simply a passing thought now, but consider Him,
concentrate Him now, and constantly focus on Him. So let's consider, let's fix
our eyes on Jesus today. The writer of Hebrews gives us
two great reasons as to why we should fix our eyes on Jesus
every day, constantly. First, we need to fix our eyes
on Jesus because of who we are. because of who we are. Now, if
you've heard me preach for very long, then you probably assume
that I'm going to start talking now about how sinful we are and
the value of knowing our natural condition. And that's not bad.
I think it's always helpful to be reminded of how badly we need
God's grace and His mercy. I think that's good for us. However,
in this context, in this passage, I don't think that's the true
intention of the writer here. Rather, he refers to us as what? Holy brothers. These are people
who have been transformed. They're no longer in their fallen
sinful state without Christ. They have Christ. They're holy
brothers. The word holy can either mean
set apart or separated to Christ, or it can also mean pure and
perfect. So one, it can mean our position
in Christ, or it can mean our practice since we are in Christ.
I think the context here, the writer is referring to our position
in Christ. We are declared holy because of our union with Christ. We cannot practice holiness without
being in a position of holiness. We can attempt to do good and
earn God's favor, but we can't be good and earn God's favor
until he puts us in Christ and makes us holy. Now all of a sudden
we have new desires and new hearts, but this is the position we are.
We are holy brothers. That's our identity now in Christ. We are holy, set apart, separated
unto Christ. Now those of us who have been
believers for a long time, this is probably pretty easy to understand.
But for the typical person, this is a truly bizarre way of thinking.
It seems like almost everything good that we have in our life,
that we experience in life, is because we've done something
to cause it. You get a raise at work because
you've done your job well. You get a good grade or a poor
one based on the work that you did. To the natural man, it seems
as though everything in life is a result of what we do. It seems. We know better. We
know that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father. But
our natural mind thinks we've earned it. We've done this or
done that and that's what we've accomplished. So here comes Jesus
saying there's a way for sinners to go to heaven. in our natural
mind we think I just have to be good enough and God will accept
me. I've told this story before but
many years ago when I was a seminary student we went out door to door
and sometimes to visitors of our church and to share the gospel
with them and I was with a team it was my first opportunity to
be the one to share the gospel and it was a young girl that
had visited our youth group and so we went to visit her home
and Her dad said she was busy studying for her big test, but
he would talk to us. And he had no clue what grace
meant. No clue of the work that Jesus
did. And we were taught to ask a very
important question. Basically, at this point in your
life, if you were to die in an accident, do you know that you
would go to heaven? And the second question is even more important.
If you were to die today in an accident and stand before God,
and he asks you, why should I let you into my heaven? What would
you say? That gives us the frame, the foundation on which a person
is standing. Why they think God would let
them into heaven. And this guy without batting
an eye, he said, well, I'm probably not good enough, but I think
God is kind and he would Crack the gate open and kind of turn
his back and let me sneak in. So we shared the gospel. And
we planted seeds. This man really honestly believed
that if he was good enough that God would let him in. But he
knew that it really wasn't. We have this natural idea that
that's how we get to heaven. But God says you can't be good
enough. It's not that one sin, or one good work rather, it balances
out better than one bad work. That if you have more good, it
outweighs the bad. But that's not the way the Bible
looks at the bad works that we do, the sin that we do. The sin
erases the good. It's not a comparison and a measurement
of the amount. It's that one sin erases any
good. And that's where that song that
we sang earlier in the service is just so wonderful. His robes
for mine. My sin was placed upon him. His
righteousness was credited to me. God has taken my sin upon
himself upon the cross. and granted me his righteousness."
We are holy brothers. God declares us to be holy because
of the holiness of his son. The writer also says that we
share in a heavenly calling. I like the translation of the
New American Standard better when it says that we are partakers
of the heavenly calling. Partakers, share, means the same
thing, but I just like the visual picture of partakers. It's that
we are in this together. We're partners in this. We are
partaking in the heavenly calling. We're not alone. We share in
a mutual salvation. We received a calling from God
to be his child, and we're in the same family now. Years ago,
there was a Christian comedian that a lot of Christians criticized
because of the language he would use or this or that. He was an
immature Christian, maybe, but he was a believer. And he would
respond to them by saying, well, you can pick your friends, but
you can't pick your family. You're stuck with me. We are
one in Christ as brothers and sisters in Christ. We are united.
We are wholly, positionally holy in Christ and united together
as a family. We need to take a good hard look
at Jesus because of who we are. Without Him, there's no holiness. There's no salvation. There's
no benefit of gathering together to do what we're doing today. But with Christ, we build one
another up. We encourage, we're part of the
same body, the same family. that requires all of its parts
to be healthy and functioning. When you're not here, when you're
disconnected from the body, the rest of us hurt. We need one
another. So first we need to fix our eyes
on Jesus because of who we are. And then obviously we need to
fix our eyes on Jesus because of who He is. As we read the
book of Hebrews, you see that Jesus is greater in chapter 1,
greater than the angels. He's greater than the prophets
in the past. God spoke through the prophets, but his final revelation
has come to us through his Son. And do you remember the warning
that we glimpsed at last week in verse 1 of chapter 2? The warning that we are prone
to drifting, prone to wander from God. And in the case of
the original readers, They appear to be the threat of drifting
back into Judaism. So the writer is saying, Moses
was great, but Jesus is far superior to Moses. Don't drift back. Beware. He's making it clear that Jesus
is better. Look at verse 3, in Hebrews 3. He says, Jesus has been counted
worthy of more glory than Moses. It's of tremendous value to be
reminded of the greatness of Moses, but Jesus is far superior
to Moses. And then in verse 2 we read that
Jesus is the apostle and high priest of our confession. I think we probably have a pretty
good idea of what the high priest title would mean. We emphasize
that a lot in this church, that he sacrificed himself as our
high priest. He didn't present a sacrifice,
he became the sacrifice. As John the Baptist proclaimed,
behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He
is the sacrifice once and for all and forever. We understand, I hope, his high
priestly role as our sacrifice. But he's called the apostle.
It's an interesting title. To my knowledge, it's only used
here in Hebrews. Jesus referred to his disciples,
he talked about being sent by the Father, but he didn't use
the same word there in John 4. or elsewhere, but in John 4,
he also said, my will is to do, or my food is to do the will
of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Jesus was sent by the
Father, and that's literally what the word apostle means,
one who is sent. And so Jesus is the apostle. sent to complete our redemption
on the cross and to be raised in glory and to ascend to the
right hand of the Father for us. He is the Apostle. And then next the writer uses
another title and says that Jesus is the builder of God's house. Moses and Jesus were both faithful
to the one who sent them. Moses was a picture of what would
come ultimately through Christ. He was sent by God to deliver
his people out of slavery from Egypt and to lead them to the
promised land. But Jesus was sent from the Father
to lead his children out of slavery to sin and to lead us to heaven.
He's better. Moses was sent to lead God's
people in righteousness by means of the law. Jesus was sent to
grant his children righteousness by his perfect obedience to the
law. He's better. Moses was used by
God to oversee God's house, he says. But Jesus is the builder
of the house. Moses is part of the house, a
very important part obviously of the house, but still merely
a member of it. The builder obviously is always
greater than that building itself. Now, the word building or house
is used many times throughout the Bible, especially the New
Testament, in referring to the people of God. In many places
we can read about God building his church, such as in Matthew
16, when Jesus says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell
will not prevail against it. We are part of what Christ is
building, and hell cannot stop Jesus. This is so important for
us to remember as we desire even to see our own local church grow.
Jesus is building his church that spans the globe, spans time. And he's using us in this little
local church to do part of that process. Throughout my many years
of ministry in several churches, I've heard people, even a couple
of you, ask me such questions as, what are you going to do
to grow the church? What are you going to change
so that we'll grow? Or if we don't change this or
that, then we'll die. This may come as a shock to a
few of you, but I am not building this church. The officers are
not building this church. Jesus is building His church,
and we are simply a part of that great work that He uses to accomplish
His purposes. He is the builder. However, that
doesn't mean that we just sit here and do nothing and watch
and see what he'll do. The normal process that God uses
to build his church is to equip his people to build up one another,
encourage one another. Turn to Ephesians 4, earlier
in the New Testament, Ephesians 4, where Paul explains how God
builds up how he builds his church by building up the local church,
Ephesians 4. Look at verse 11. Talking about Christ, he says,
and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the
shepherds, or pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work
of ministry so that the body of Christ may be built up. Jesus is building His church
and the gates of hell will not prevail. He's building His church
by giving the local church pastors and teachers that will work to
equip you for good works of service so that you'll build each other
up. You are His people. You're not
my people. You're His people. we are part
of his church that he's building. And I could go on and on, because
I love the topic, but let's consider Jesus, the apostle, the high
priest, the builder. And then in verse six, we read
that Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. Jesus is
the son of God. Moses was a servant. Jesus is
the son. Last year I had the privilege
of officiating over 20 funerals. Most of them were families through
the funeral home who had no pastor. A few of them were members in
our own church family and some in the funeral home were genuine
believers. They just were without a pastor.
There is a stark contrast between the funeral for a person who
was loved by God and a person who did not recognize God and
had rejected Christ. At almost every funeral, however,
I think in every case, I begin the same way by admitting the
difficulty of facing this hard reality, the death and sorrow
that comes in the face of death. No one wants to see a loved one
pass away, but I point them to Jesus. who also wept in the presence
of death when he saw the sorrow and the agony of those who were
at the tomb of Lazarus. He knew what he was about to
do. He himself wasn't filled with sorrow because he knew he
was going to speak to Lazarus and raise him from the dead.
But he wept because of the pain and the sorrow that the people
were feeling. They were like sheep without
a shepherd that had no hope. The presence of death causes
pain and sorrow. Listen to these words of comfort
with which I begin every funeral service. Jesus, before he got
to the tomb, Martha met him, Lazarus his sister. And Jesus
said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes
in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives
and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? Martha responded with one of
the most amazing statements to Jesus. But again, remember, before
I tell you the statement, remember that she was in deep grief over
the loss of her brother that she loved so desperately. So in deep grief, she says to
Jesus, yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of
God who is coming into the world. Jesus asked the question of all
questions. Do you believe this? Do you believe
my claims to be the Son of God? Do you believe that I am the
Apostle, the High Priest, the Builder, the Son? Do you believe
When God created this world, it was absolutely perfect, without
sin. But man turned his back on God
and went his own way. And ever since then, this world
has been broken, filled with misery. And we can see the misery
everywhere we look. You can even see it in your own
life if you look closely enough. And we try everything we can
think of to find relief from the pain and misery that this
life causes. But nothing seems to fix the
deep hurt. But God, God stepped into this
world. God stepped into your world through
his son and he gave life. Now we have assurance. Now we
have the confidence that he is going to restore his original
design. Now we know. We know that he
is in the process of making us more and more like himself and
he will never stop until we finally see him face to face. He will
complete the work that he has begun in us. We know that. We still have a long way to go.
But he's still at work, building his church. There is nothing
that is as good as Jesus. Yesterday, I had a tremendous
experience, personally. You might not have thought it
was such a great experience, but for me, it was one of the best things
of the week, maybe of the month. There was a group of old people,
older than me, Thankfully, I was the youngest one there. And this
makes sense why I'm saying this in a minute. But it was made
up of the youth group from First Presbyterian Church, the church
that my dad came to when I was only two years old, moved from
Minnesota to Olathe and became their pastor. And then in 73,
they started this church. But in my preteen years, the
youth ministries throughout Kansas City were just exploding. And
at First Pres, they were exploding during my upper elementary preteen
years. My brother and sister absolutely
had the best youth ministry that I've ever seen in my lifetime. And it was so incredible to sit
there again. I was always kind of tailing
the group and always want to be around them, even as a little
boy. So I got to be there again yesterday. uh and and here they
passed around a microphone a little cordless thing and and they started
sharing kind of who they are you know and how many kids they
have and this and that but then they just started giving testimonies
as to what that youth group did in their lives it was amazing
to hear how the gospel transformed them Some of them were believers
before they came to First Press, but most of them, the vast majority
of them, came to know Christ through either my dad's preaching
or the ministry of a man by the name of Doc Harned, who worked
with the youth and college students in those years. But they gave
glory to the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He changed them. He made them
come to life. They dedicated their life, and
many of them, in some way to building up other people. There
were pastors, missionary, teachers, a soldier, a Kansas state senator. Most of the people there had
given their lives in one way or another to serve other people
through the gospel as well. It truly was an amazing opportunity
for me to sit there and listen to how a faithful gospel ministry
transforms people's lives. Because it is the gospel that
is able to make you wise unto salvation. Jesus is better. He is superior
to anything and everything. Come to Jesus.
Jesus Is Better than Moses
Series Through the Bible
| Sermon ID | 92124152892596 |
| Duration | 28:46 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Hebrews 3 |
| Language | English |
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