Slices
Prepare
We share friendships and a common purpose with groups of people. But life is busy. We get distracted. Over time, relationships fragment; their significance diminishes. How easily can that happen to our relationship with Christ?
Bible passage
Jesus greater than Moses
3 Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. 2 He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. 3 Jesus has been found worthy of greater honour than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honour than the house itself. 4 For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. 5 ‘Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,’ bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. 6 But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.
Warning against unbelief
7 So, as the Holy Spirit says:
‘Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your ancestors tested and tried me,
though for forty years they saw what I did.
10 That is why I was angry with that generation;
I said, “Their hearts are always going astray,
and they have not known my ways.”
11 So I declared on oath in my anger,
“They shall never enter my rest.”’
12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. 15 As has just been said:
‘Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion.’
16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief
Explore
Until Christ came, no one had ever surpassed Moses as the person through whom God communicated with his people. The writer makes a comparison between Moses and Jesus by saying that God’s people were ‘God’s house’. God called Moses ‘faithful in all my house’, rebuking Aaron and Miriam for not taking their brother Moses seriously (Numbers 12:7). Moses may have been the steward of this house, but Christ is far more. He is its creator and builder.
Moses had to contend with the rebellious behaviour of God’s people in the wilderness, belligerently testing God, as the quotation from Psalm 95 describes (vs 8–11). This leads the writer to urge readers who have accepted the salvation of Christ to persevere, so that there is ‘no evil unbelief lying around that will trip you up and throw you off course, diverting you from the living God’ (vs 12–14, The Message). Like the people of Israel, they too could come under God’s judgement.
These are serious words. The ascended Jesus calls for our full attention (v 1) for we are not only at home in the ‘house’ Jesus built, but we have become his younger brothers and sisters (2:11; 3:1).
Respond
Use verses 6 and 14 to help you begin a conversation with God.
Deeper Bible study
Lord, speak into my life by your Holy Spirit today as I read the Scriptures.
This chapter has two parts: a comparison between Jesus and Moses, and a warning from the example of the wilderness generation. There are also two unusual conditional sentences, where our status in the present will be disclosed in the future. The first is in verse 6, concluding six verses containing the word ‘house’ six times. The word is ambiguous and only at the end do we discover that ‘house’ means ‘household’: we are God’s household now if we persevere into the future, firmly holding our confidence and hope.
In chapters 1 and 2 we overheard God and Jesus speaking to one another in the Scriptures. Now, the Holy Spirit speaks, addressing God’s people. The Spirit quotes Psalm 95:7–11, where God warned the people worshipping1 not to be like the faithless wilderness generation who were excluded from the resting place God had prepared for them in the Promised Land.2 They were unable to enter because of unbelief, and the writer of Hebrews emphasises that readers of the epistle need to persevere in faith to the very end, demonstrating that they truly have come to share in Christ (the other conditional sentence, v 14).
The Spirit applied words that were first spoken to the Temple worshippers, to the readers of Hebrews and, since it is still ‘Today’ (v 15), the Spirit now applies them to us. In verses 12 and 13 we hear the Spirit calling us, not so much to look out for ourselves but to look out for others. We are to encourage one another so that no member of our believing communities is hardened by the deceitfulness of sin and so excluded from God’s ultimate rest, the glory to which God is bringing us.3
Verses 12 and 13 are a warning against temptation. As you gather with others, be on the lookout for a sister or brother who needs your help to persevere.
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Job 29,30; Luke 23
Pray for Scripture Union
North Region Support Worker Sarah Howard-Smith is getting ready for Edale Adventure in the middle of the month. Pray that as she and the rest of the team prepare, they will know God’s guidance and peace. Pray that God will prepare the hearts of the children who come.
