2007 Book of Hebrews Series – “House of God”
Hebrews 3:1-6
Sermon preached at Curwensville Presbyterian Church – February 18, 2007

Prayer Introduction: To say that I am not mechanically inclined is a huge understatement, as you know. I watch in awe at you who work so well with your hands. Something is broken. You fix it. It’s hard to believe that when I was a kid I wanted to be a carpenter. (Now, I work for one.)

            This morning we are going to look at Hebrews 3:1-6, which directs us to Jesus – the master builder of the house of God. This passage will probably make more sense to some of you men – who can build things – then it does to me. Either way we need the Holy Spirit to bear witness to God’s Word so let us begin with prayer…We pray now for the preacher in the pulpit. He is not worthy, but by your grace he is able. And so it is through Jesus Christ that we pray – Amen!

READ Hebrews 3:1-6 (NOTE: Earlier in the service we read Psalm 127 and John 2:18-22)

I. “Therefore – Holy – Brothers” (v.1)

Our passage begins with that wonderful word, “Therefore” – and whenever you see a “therefore” you should ask, “What’s it there for?” It points us back to what was just said. Last week we saw the wonderful truth, at the end of Chapter 2, that Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers; all believers are Christ’s brothers and sisters, and we are brothers and sisters to one another – in Christ.

            Therefore we are called brothers; not just brothers, but “holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling” because of Jesus – the apostle and high priest whom we confess.

            Is this your confession? Do you trust, wholly, in Jesus Christ as the one who makes you holy?

            (1) Do you confess that Jesus was made like his brothers – that He is God “in the flesh”? He isn’t just a prophet or a good moral teacher. You cannot pick and choose to believe parts of what He says, and be the lord of your own life.

            (2) Do you confess that Jesus, as the author of our salvation, was made perfect in suffering? That is to say that salvation was made complete through his suffering. That he suffered in facing every temptation that we face, but never sinned. He lived the perfect life that we have failed to live, not because his life was easier than ours – indeed, he faced every temptation that we face – with greater suffering.

            You know the difficulty of resisting temptation. You also know the ease of caving in to temptation. Jesus never caved in. Jesus resisted temptation the whole time. He suffered in temptation more fully than you and I ever will – because he never caved in. That is why, whenever we face trials and temptations, we need to “fix our thoughts” on him that he can help us not to cave in.

            How do we fix our thoughts on Jesus? We do this, individually, in our daily devotions – reading God’s Word and praying for his help in sanctifying us; seeing God’s holy hand working on us in all of our trials. We also do this, corporately, by having an accountability partner who prays for us and with us; and by being part of the church that calls you to holiness – always reminding you of God’s grace and power.

            (3) Do you confess that Jesus’ death on the cross was the atoning sacrifice – paying the full price for your sins? There is nothing more that needs to be paid. We don’t repent of sin in order to earn God’s love. We already have it. God demonstrated the fullness of his love in sending His Son to die for us, while we were still sinners (cf. Romans 5:8).

            What makes us “brothers” is what makes us “holy” – Jesus, the apostle and high priest. You are holy in God’s sight, because of Jesus. You are God’s holy child, because of Jesus. Are you confessing this – not only in your mind, but in your life?

II. Jesus and Moses (vv.2-4)

Beginning in verse 2, the author of Hebrews draws a comparison of the faithfulness of Jesus to the faithfulness of Moses. The author will make it clear that Jesus is superior to Moses; but understand why the author chooses to compare Jesus to Moses.

            This letter was originally written to Hebrews, to Jews. Who was the greatest figure of the Old Testament? Moses. He wrote the Law – the first 5 books of the Bible. He sat atop Mount Sinai and talked with God face-to-face. There can be no one greater than Moses, can there?

            Who is the person you put on a pedestal? Who is the figure of faith that you look to? For years the church put pastors on pedestals. That is way too much pressure – not to mention wrong. Who do you look to, saying, “I wish I had faith like theirs”?

In our celebrity-driven culture we put certain faith leaders on pedestals: Purpose-Driven Rick Warren; Prosperity-Driven Joel Osteen; media-figures like James Dobson, Charles Stanley and Billy Graham. Many faith leaders are good men; but they are not great – and should not be put on pedestals.

            The pedestal is reserved for Jesus Christ and Him alone. We should look at Jesus and say, “I wish I had faith like his;” and then realize that He came so that we can.

            We can give thanks for those who were faithful. Certainly we can look to Moses as one who was faithful (but not perfect) in God’s house. The original audience of this letter would certainly flinch at verse 3 – “Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself.”

            Let me apply this to our current situation in order that you may flinch in the same way.

            Jesus is worthy of greater honor than “the way we’ve always done it” or more pointedly, “the way we want it to be.”

            Many church-goers give great honor to the house – the structure of how we do it. We will see, in a moment, that “God’s house” refers to the people who are the church; so it can be said many church-goers give great honor to the church. Indeed, we should appreciate and honor the church as a whole – and the people in it.

            But we must always be careful to give greater honor to the builder of the house – to God himself. We don’t do what “the church” wants – or any one member of it. We do what God wants.

            For two months we have been discussing a proposal to begin our celebration of the Lord’s Day earlier in the morning in order to focus on God without worrying about the clock striking noon.

            It has been a great joy to listen to so many of you say again and again, “We should not be trying to please anyone but the Lord alone.” It has been refreshing to hear this in a day and age when people think primarily about themselves.

            The conversation about changing the schedule has not focused on, “Well, what do you want;” but has been centered on, “What does God want?”

            This schedule change has been a living example of Hebrews 3:3 and verse 4 – “For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.” Structures come and go; God is always building.

III. We are God’s House (vv.5-6)

Verses 5 & 6 draw out the conclusion that Moses WAS faithful as a servant in the house, but Christ IS faithful as a son over God’s house.

            Notice three things about those comparisons:

            (1) Moses is acknowledged for his faithfulness in the past tense; while Christ is faithful now – in the present tense.

            (2) Moses was a faithful servant, while Christ is a faithful son.

            (3) Moses was faithful as one who was in the house – he was one of God’s people; while Christ is faithful over God’s house – He is the Head of the House, the Lord of the Manor.

            The rest of verse 6 tells us in plain English, “And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.”

            There are two direct applications that we should draw out of this:

            (1) We are God’s House. That’s right, the building that we are now sitting in is not God’s House – we, the people, are God’s House. Too many people have wrongly called this building God’s House. It is more rightly called “the sanctuary…the meeting place…the house of worship…”

            We are God’s house. There are other places in Scripture where this same imagery is used. In 1 Timothy 3:15 Paul refers to “God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.”

            1 Peter 2:5 says, “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

            We are God’s House, together. No one person can be the whole house. We are the individual stones who make up the house, just as there are individual stones that make up this building. We ought to appreciate the physical stones, but not more than the spiritual stones.

            Do you put more emphasis – in your mind and your actions – on the church’s buildings and property; or on the people? Are you more likely to give your time and money to the building or to the people?

            To be sure, God calls us to be good stewards of our church’s property; but even more so God calls us to be caretakers of each other. What are you doing to take care of God’s House? What are you doing to let God’s House take care of you?

            (2) There is a big “if” at the end of verse 6: “We are his house, IF we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.” In other words, it is not the profession of faith but the perseverance of faith that reveals whether a person is truly a holy child of God or not.

            A large part of our church’s budget – and I would guess your personal budget – is in maintenance. Something is always breaking down isn’t it? Right after our last car payment, we had to sink another month’s-worth of payment into repairs. Every one of you is either in the middle of a home repair job, or getting ready to start one. We need to get new clothes to replace the one’s worn out. If you have kids you know that you are forever getting new shoes.

            Maintenance and repairs. Maintenance and repairs. This is the case not only with the physical, but also the spiritual.

            We need to put more time, money and effort into spiritual maintenance? We know that people’s faith can break down from time to time. Why would we expect it to get repaired all by itself? You don’t expect the furnace to fix itself, why would you expect someone’s soul to fix itself.

            We are God’s house together. And it takes a great deal of time, money and effort to keep the house up to specs. We have the blueprints revealed in God’s Word. We have the master builder revealed in God’s Son.

            But we need to get our hands dirty. We need to dig in to the lives of God’s saints and do the hard work of repairing broken hearts and lives. We will rip skin off our knuckles. We will get frustrated. We will make some mistakes – doing it wrong as often as we do it right.

            But we will know that we are being faithful if we keep our focus on the spiritual house by calling one another to fix our thoughts on Jesus. We will see the Holy Spirit sanctify people’s lives? We will see repentance, reconciliation and restoration.

            We will see people get angry when we lovingly approach them; but we will have all of eternity to rejoice that we did it.

            Let us fix God’s House by fixing our eyes on Jesus.

MAY THE TRUTH SET YOU FREE – AMEN!