Hebrews 3:1-16

Hebrews 3:1. Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus:

Oh, that he had more consideration at our hands! Consider him; you cannot know all his excellence, all his value to you, except he is the subject of your constant meditation. Consider him; think of his nature, his offices, his work, his promises, his relation to you: «Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus;»

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

See how our Lord Jesus Christ condescended to be appointed of the Father. In coming as a Mediator, taking upon himself our humanity, he «made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant,» and being found in fashion as a servant, we find that he was faithful; to every jot and tittle, he carried out his charge.

Hebrews 3:3. For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house.

And Moses was but one stone in the house. Though in a certain sense he was a servant in it, yet in another, and, for him, a happier sense, he was only a stone in the house which the Lord Jesus Christ had builded. Let us think of our Lord as the Architect and Builder of his own Church, and let our hearts count him worthy of more glory than Moses; let us give him glory in the highest. However highly a Jew may think of Moses, and he ought to think highly of him, and so ought we, yet infinitely higher than Moses must ever rise the incarnate Son of God.

Hebrews 3:4. For every house is builded by some;

By someone or other;

Hebrews 3:4. But he that built all things is God.

And Christ is God; and he is the Builder of all things in the spiritual realm, ay, and in the natural kingdom, too, for «without him was not anything made that was made.» So he is to have eternal honour and glory as the one great Master-builder.

Hebrews 3:5. And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after; but Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.

You see, then, that the apostle had first made a distinction between Christ and Moses on the ground of, the Builder being greater than the house he builds; now, in the second place, he shows Christ's superiority to Moses on the ground that a son in his own house is greater than a servant in the house of his master. How sweetly he introduces the truth that we are the house of Christ! Do we realize that the Lord Jesus Christ dwells in the midst of us? How clean we ought to be, how holy, how heavenly! How we should seek to rise above earth, and keep ourselves reserved for the Crucified! In this house, no rival should be permitted ever to dwell; but the great Lord should have every chamber of it entirely to himself. Oh, that he may take his rest within our hearts as his holy habitation; and may there be nothing in our church life that shall grieve the Son of God, and cause him even for a moment to be withdrawn from us: «whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.» Perseverance final perseverance is the test of election. He whom God has chosen holds on and holds out even to the end, while temporary professors make only a fair show in the flesh, but, by-and-by, their faith vanishes away.

Hebrews 3:7. Wherefore

Now comes a long parenthesis:

Hebrews 3:7. (As the Holy Ghost saith, Today if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I swore in my wrath, They shalt not enter into my rest.)

Oh, that none of us, as professors of the faith of Christ, may be like Israel in the wilderness! I fear there is too much likeness; God grant that it may be carried no further! May we hear the voice of God, as they did not hear it, for their ears were dull of hearing! May we never harden our hear as they did, for they kicked against the command of God, and rebelled against the thunders of Sinai! May God grant that we may never tempt him, as they did, when they were continually proposing to God to do other than he willed to do, something for their gratification which would not have been right, and which therefore he did not do! Oh, that we might never grieve him as they did, for they grieved him forty years! He bore with them, and yet they bored him. He forgave and overlooked their errors only to be provoked by the repetition of them, for they would not know what God made very plain. His works were such that, the wayfaring men might have read them; but they did not know God's ways, and at last he banished them from all participation in His rest. Their carcasses fell in the wilderness, and they entered not into the land of promise. «Wherefore»

Hebrews 3:12. Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

Watch over each other as well as over yourselves. Take heed lest sin hardens you before you are aware of it; even while you fancy that you have wiped it out by repentance, petrifaction will remain upon your heart «through the deceitfulness of sin.»

Hebrews 3:14. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; while it is said, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.

Not all, for there were two faithful ones. See how the Spirit of God gathers up the fragments that remain. If there are but two faithful ones out of two million, he knows it, and he records it.