Hebrews 3:1-6 (HCSB)
Therefore, holy brothers and companions in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession; He was faithful to the One who appointed Him, just as Moses was in all God’s household. For Jesus is considered worthy of more glory than Moses, just as the builder has more honor than the house. Now every house is built by someone, but the One who built everything is God. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s household, as a testimony to what would be said in the future. But Christ was faithful as a Son over His household. And we are that household if we hold on to the courage and the confidence of our hope.
The Jewish people looked to Moses as a kind of savior, since it was through him that God delivered the Jewish nation from Egyptian bondage and through him that God gave His law to the people. They admired him, even more than Abraham, the first ancestor of the Israelites.
But the writer of Hebrews wants to refocus the Jewish Christians away from Moses and onto Jesus, where their focus needed to be. Moses was faithful to God in all but one instance, disobeying at the waters of Meribah (Numbers 20:1-13), and losing the Promised Land for himself. But Jesus was 100% faithful His whole life, obeying even so far as to going to the cross and suffering pain, shame and suffering, and regained the true Promised Land for God’s people.
The writer acknowledged the house, the nation of Israel, that was established through Moses. But he clearly points out that Jesus himself, God in the flesh, was the one who designed and built that house through the works that were done by Moses, and is thus worthy of greater praise and devotion.
In the same way, the Church, the people of God, is a new house designed and built by Jesus as His body, His presence in the world today. Thus He, as the architect and builder, is worthy of all our praise and all our allegiance. He was not merely God’s servant as Moses was. He was and is God’s eternal Son, something no prophet was ever able to claim.
Father, I am struck by the last sentence of this passage: the fact that we are the house of Jesus IF we hold onto our courage and IF we hold onto our hope. For the Jewish Christians, the easy path was compromise, a return to their Jewish roots and to salvation through obedience to the law. That path was less controversial to their family and friends, and it felt safer and more comfortable. But, as the writer pointed out, that “easier” path was actually a forsaking of the true path, and a turning away from being the house of Jesus. Help me, Lord, to never choose the easy way over the true way, to never choose tradition over truth, or family and friends over the faith that can move mountains. Amen.