NT for Lent 3: Hebrews 3
Now, we come to Hebrews 3. The title of this passage made me laugh because of the Beatles “bigger than Jesus” associations. Heh.
Jesus Greater Than Moses
1Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. 2He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. 3Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. 4For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. 5Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house, testifying to what would be said in the future. 6But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.
Warning Against Unbelief
7So, as the Holy Spirit says:
“Today, if you hear his voice,
8do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the desert,
9where your fathers tested and tried me
and for forty years saw what I did.
10That is why I was angry with that generation,
and I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
11So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”
12See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. 15As has just been said:
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion.”16Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? 18And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
February 24th, 2007 at 10:49 am
“’Today, if you hear his voice, 8do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, 9where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did.10That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,
and they have not known my ways.’”
“13But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
When we are going through the deserts of life - we need to claim the Word of God as our reality, not the circumstantial evidence. He has promised to supply our EVERY need, if we look to the Source of our supply, and know that “HE IS FAITHFUL WHO HAS PROMISED”, and WILL manifest those promises IF we won’t doubt. It isn’t that we lack faith, the Word says that we have all been given a measure of faith, but we place that faith in the things we see, hear, taste, smell and touch, and not in God’s “unseen” realm that WILL manifest in the natural realm, like “manna” in the desert - if we will believe it.
March 2nd, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Having proved Jesus is greater than angels we are now establishing that Jesus is greater than Moses. (Again not an argument I need to be convinced of, but considering we call the book ‘Hebrews’ it may be relevant.)
Basically Moses was a faithful servant of God among God’s household of people but Jesus as Son of God shares in God’s creating and so is greater than any one member of that people becuase Jesus makes those people God’s house, just as we too will be if we hold on to our hope in Christ.
(It is not often that I call Jesus an apostle, but I guess he is the first witness to the resurrection!)
Psalm 95, which is quoted here, is the only psalm that is recited every day in the Divine Office from the Catholic tradition, which I have been spasmodically following. In their texts they give a NT verse for each pslam to give a christological focus to reflections on that psalm.
For this pslam it is Hebrews 3:13a:
“Every day, as long as this ‘today’ lasts, keep encouraging one another.”
What I never realised until today was that Hebrews was refering to this Psalm when it says that.
Yes let us encourage one another to remain faithful to our hope in Christ.
March 2nd, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Jebus, I thought the promise here was that “if we hold on to our courage and the hope” we will be “God’s house” and “enter God’s rest”. Do you see that as translating to material supply?
I’m not sure why you are so down on doubting. I didn’t see anything here in Hebrews against having doubts. Those who were condemned where not those who had doubts but those who had such “sinful, unbelieving hearts” they ” turned away from the living God.” Sometimes it takes a lot of courage and hope to honestly doubt.