Hebrews
Lesson 31 October 27, 2005
NKJ Psalm 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not
sin against You!
We are in Hebrews 3 starting a new chapter in Hebrews.
I don’t know about you but I am having a great time in this study of Hebrews. I
have never taught my way through the book of Hebrews before and there is so
much in this book. It is so exciting to go back and see how things connect to
the Old Testament and bring things forward. It pulls everything together to
understand all the nuances, all the shades of meaning and all the innuendo that
underlies the teaching in Hebrews. This is a tremendous, tremendous book.
Now as I have said just to give us a little focus as
we enter into a new paragraph which is 3:1-6, I want to go back structurally
and think about where we are going. The writer starts off in the first 4 verses
by giving us a basic orientation to the fact that it is in these last days,
that is the Church Age that God has finally completely fully, completely,
sufficiently spoken through His Son. The Son’s qualifications are emphasized in
reference to His deity being the exact caricature or exact representation of
the Father. He is the express image, the hupostasis
of His person. He upholds all things by the word of His power and He has been
elevated to the right hand of the Father on High. So within the structure of
1:3 there is an emphasis on His deity on the one hand and His humanity on the
other. The humanity comes through that He sat down at the right hand of the
Father. Deity doesn’t sit down. In His humanity He has been elevated above the
angels. Embedded within this is the outworking of the nuances of the word
“Son”. He is a Son of God indicating full deity. He is the Son of Man
indicating true humanity. He is the Son of David, His royal title that relates
to the Davidic Covenant and prior to that the Abrahamic Covenant. In His
humanity He has gone through the trials, the tests, and the suffering of the
First Advent which qualified Him to go to the cross. It is His victory on the
cross that qualified Him for the resurrection and promotion to heaven and
advance above all the angels.
In verses 5 down through 14 there is an emphasis on His
superiority to the angels. Again this emphasizes more the humanity side of the
sonship. As the Son of God, as full deity He has always been in authority over
the angels. He has always been superior to the angels. But in His humanity as
the Son of David, as the Son of Man who has gone through the sanctification
process, He has passed all of the tests. In His humanity He is elevated above
the angels and qualified for the position to rule and reign over the
angels. Right
now He is in a holding pattern awaiting the coming or the giving of the
kingdom. Daniel 7, Psalm 110
NKJ Psalm 110:1 A Psalm of David. The LORD said to my Lord, "Sit at My right hand,
Till I make Your enemies Your footstool."
All of that from verse 5 down through the end of
chapter one functions as the first point in the sermon. That first point comes
to a conclusion with a warning and a challenge to us that we must not drift
away because of the significance of everything that is going on.
NKJ Hebrews 2:3 how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the
first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who
heard Him,
Salvation here has that idea of ultimate
glorification, the goal or the direction of our salvation in terms of where God
is taking us toward the future. It is like the first step. So we have taken
this first step up. The Son in His humanity is elevated above the angels. In His humanity He as accomplished
something that is, as we developed on the second step, related to His being a pioneer
in our sanctification. So we have the concluding challenge of chapter 2:1-4.
Then we go to the second point. The second point
unpacks the whole idea of His role as the pioneer and the precedent setter for
our spiritual life. The first verses from 5-9 focus on that. He is the one that
as a man as the Son of Man fulfills everything that God designed man to do.
Thus because He completes everything, He is elevated over the angels
emphasizing that the world to come in verse 5 is going to be in subordination
to Him as a man, not to the angels. This emphasizes the whole process of how He
got there. What qualified Him for
that ruling and reigning position in the future? The mechanics of that come
into play in verses 10 through 18 where we see that He who sanctifies (That’s
the Lord Jesus Christ) and those who are being sanctified (That’s us.) are all
of one nature. It is an emphasis on His hypostatic union. He is accomplishing
all of this in His humanity.
NKJ Hebrews 2:14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh
and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might
destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
In His humanity He goes through these tests and
trials. As the captain of our salvation back in verse 10, He would be brought
to completion through suffering. Where that takes Him is that He then becomes
our merciful and faithful high priest.
NKJ Hebrews 2:18 For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid
those who are tempted.
That brings us to the concluding part of the second
step. We conclude it with verse 6. Then we go to the challenge, the
exhortation, the warning. That’s a long section. The last warning was four
verses. This warning extends from 3:7 down through the end of chapter 4. So it
is a much longer challenge. If you don’t understand the argument that he is
laying out here, the position that he is laying out that Jesus Christ in His
humanity sets the pattern and precedent as the pathfinder of our salvation and
that He is brought as the one who completes; then we don’t understand where this
warning is going to go. The transition or the connection comes in the next few
verses.
NKJ Hebrews 3:1 Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly
calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus,
He is addressing believers, not just them. He is
addressing them primarily; but he is addressing us, all believers in the Church
Age through that initial first century audience.
That is only a starting point. This is all part of one
sentence. Verse 1 and 2 are one sentence. The reason I emphasize this is that
there is a lot of additional detail in these two verses; but the main idea is
given in the mandate, the command of verse 1.
The command is to consider Him. That’s the main
idea. Everything else is the
frills and whistles and bells on the main idea. So if you keep your focus on that command then everything
else down through verse 6 actually supports that mandate.
Now let’s take it apart exegetically. The first word
“therefore” isn’t really an inference conclusion like therefore. It is an
inferential particle but it has the idea of referring to the cause or the
ground or the motive of something.
It is a type of inference.
The mandate here becomes the ground for everything
that comes after it. This becomes a foundation. Everything else in the next few
verses supports the base of what is in verse 1.
Then we are addressed as holy brethren. The word hagios doesn’t mean that we are perfect,
morally pure, or that we are without sin. Holy or hagios means to be set apart to the service of God. The reason that
we can be called holy is that we are positionally sanctified because of our
identification with the one who sanctifies. “He who sanctifies” is the phrase
back in verse 11. According to Romans 6:3-6 at the instant you put your faith
and trust in Jesus Christ one of the 40 things that happened to you at the
instant of faith alone in Christ alone is that God the Holy Spirit took you
under the direction of God the Son and identified you with the Son’s death,
burial and resurrection. That is called the baptism by means of God the Holy
Spirit. It is also termed positional truth. That is our position in Christ. We
are placed in Him by means of God the Holy Spirit. That positionally sets us
apart so that we can now serve God. It distinguishes us from everyone else in
the human race. So we are holy and set apart. It doesn’t refer to experiential
morality. It refers to positional righteousness.
We are holy brethren. The term adelphos is often used to refer to fellow members of the royal
family of God. This connects this verse, 3:1, back to 2:11.
NKJ Hebrews 2:11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is
not ashamed to call them brethren,
That is supported by a verse from Psalm 22.
NKJ Psalm 22:22 I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I
will praise You.
My brethren are referred to as children in verse 13.
This is a form of address. He addresses believers as
holy brethren. This tells us (This gets important when we get into some of
these warning passages.) that he is addressing them as believers. He has no doubt
that they are believers. There is not a question that they are believers. There
is not a question that they could lose their salvation. He addresses them as
believers. The verbiage itself, the nomenclature, ties the whole section
together conceptually.
The second thing they are called is “partakers of the
heavenly calling.” The word for partakers is the noun metochos. It’s in the plural, metachoi.
It means companions or partakers or partners or fellow workers. It is another
term to describe the members of the body of Christ, who are all in partnership,
all members of one another in the body of Christ.
That’s one of the interesting dynamics of the body of
Christ. We are not a bunch of Lone Rangers our there trying to live the
Christian life on our own. I know that there are people who are in unusual
circumstances and all they have got is their tape recorder or a MP3 player,
but the body of Christ is not designed to be a Lone Ranger operation under
normal circumstances. It is designed to be the interaction of a body of
believers meeting together in a local church. There is this interdependency. The
Scripture says that we are members of one another in Romans 12. There is this
interdependency in the body of Christ. We are companions. We are partakers. We
participate together in everything that the Lord Jesus Christ has provided. He
is the head of the body of Christ. So we are partakers of the heavenly calling.
Heavenly has to do with its destiny. The calling has to do with our response to
the gospel and the gospel call. The adverb heavenly relates to its ultimate
destiny. We are partakers. We participate in a future destiny. So the backdrop
idea here has to do with that eternal sense of destiny. We are headed for
heaven. We are not going to be left here on the earth. It’s not all about our
time of the earth. Our time of earth is related to our heavenly calling, our
heavenly destiny.
Those two phrases, holy brethren and partakers of the
heavenly calling, indicate the recipients of this epistle.
Then we have the command - katanoeo
in the Greek. Consider is how it is translated. Think about or concentrate on. It
is an aorist active imperative, second person plural. Second person plural
means all y’all. All y’all have to concentrate on something. That is the
meaning of katanoeo. Kata is a preposition prefix that intensifies
the meaning of the verb. The verb noeo
has to do with thought. Once again
the Christian life has to do with thinking and not emoting. It has to do with
learning what God says and obeying His mandates. That is how we demonstrate our
love for God, our personal love for God. The aorist imperative emphasizes priority.
It is as if the writer is putting this in boldface type and underlining it. It
is something to do NOW. He is not emphasizing the fact that it should be continuous. I am sure
that it should be. It is emphasizing the priority. These readers need to do
this now. Why? Because they are in danger of drifting away. That was the warning
back in 2:1. They need to think now. They need to focus now. They need to
carefully observe, concentrate, and contemplate who Jesus Christ is and what He
has done. So the verb itself implies an object and the focal point of that
thought is not just contemplating your navel or waiting for liver quiver. It is
to focus on Jesus Christ.
There is unusual phraseology here for Jesus Christ. Two
words are used. First, He is called the Apostle of our confession, the Apostle.
The word apostle translates apostolos.
This is the only place in the New Testament where Jesus Christ is referred to
as an Apostle.
There are several different groups of people that are
referred to as apostles in the New Testament. You have a group of eleven
disciples that began the Church Age. They are designated as Apostles. They have
the office of apostle. They have the spiritual gift of apostle. They were
commissioned directly by the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. The qualifications
to be an apostle were: number 1 they had to be a witness of His life and His
teaching, number two they had to be a witness to the resurrection, and number
three they had to be commissioned directly by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. The
twelfth apostle is the Apostle Paul. He was directly commissioned by the Lord
Jesus Christ when Jesus Christ appeared to Him as one born out of time when he
was on the road to Damascus to go murder a bunch of believers.
When you look at the word apostelo (the verb form) it has to do with the act of commissioning
someone. What is important to pay attention to in the context is who is doing
the commissioning and what are they being commissioned to do. If you
misidentify who is being commissioned and what they are being commissioned to
do, then you will confuse the average normal everyday use of apostolos with what we would consider
the upper case Apostle, those who are commissioned by Christ. You have another
group of people such as Barnabas and others who are missionaries that are sent
out from churches who are also called apostles. They are apostles in terms of
the lower case “a” because they are not commissioned by Jesus Christ for the
mission of the twelve. They are being commissioned by local churches for a
temporary mission to carry the gospel to a specific group of people in terms of
a missionary activity. The gift of apostle is not the gift of missionary. There
is no spiritual gift of missionary. There is a gift of apostle and it was
limited to the original eleven original disciples plus the Apostle Paul.
Jesus Christ is called an Apostle.
The word apostle in its root meaning has to do with
being commissioned to perform a task, to be sent on a mission, to be a military
or political envoy, or even an ambassador. Jesus Christ is an Apostle in the
sense that He is commissioned for a task by God the Father. He is sent from
heaven to earth on a mission. So He is referred to as an Apostle. There is a
reason that the writer of Hebrews in this verse is referring to Jesus as a sent
one, as an apostolos. That is because
in these 6 verses there is going to be a comparison in contrast between Jesus
Christ as the apostolos and high
priest and Moses. In Exodus 3:10 God spoke to Moses.
NKJ Exodus 3:10 "Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may
bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt."
In the LXX the verb apostelo is used.
As Moses was a sent and commissioned by God to go to
Pharaoh and lead the people, so Jesus Christ was sent from God. There is going
to be a development of this comparison to demonstrate the superiority of Jesus
in the passage.
The second word is the word for high priest. When we
look at the two words in their construction in the Greek we have an interesting
phraseology. Just as in the English we have “the apostle and high priest”. We
don’t have “the apostle and the high priest.” There is no repetition of the second
article. It is not a Granville-Sharp
for a number of reasons. But it does fit the criterion for what is called a
hendiadys. A hendiadys a figure of speech where there are two closely connected
nouns that indicate the same thing. Usually you have the same kind of thing
that you do with the Grandville-Sharp rule with an article-noun-conjunction-noun
type of construction. What this means for example in Ephesians 4:10-11 where
you have the term pastor and teacher is a pastoring teacher or a teaching
pastor. That is how it should be understood. We often translate it
pastor-teacher, but the two words work together as one main noun and the other
modifies it. So it would be a teaching pastor or pastoring teacher emphasizing
the two functions but as one entity.
You have the same thing here. This is the sent high
priest, the commissioned high priest. So you pull the two words together where
they have a similar meaning. We must consider the commissioned high priest. So
Jesus Christ is sent as a high priest. Now Moses doesn’t have that high
priestly function. There is that difference between the two. So we are to focus
on Him. We are to concentrate on Him. We are to think about Him. We are to
meditate on Him. He is to be the focal point of our thinking – occupation
with Christ.
It doesn’t just say the apostle and high priest or the
commissioned high priest Christ Jesus. There is this other word in there that
He is the commissioned high priest of our confession. The Greek word for
confession is the Greek word homologia
which means to confess, admit, or to make a statement of belief. We often think
of a confessional statement in church history which is a doctrinal statement or
a creed such as the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed or the Chalcedonian
Creed. These are called confessions of faith or statements of doctrine. They
summarize a body of belief. Here we see that Jesus Christ is the commissioned
high priest of everything that we believe, everything that is foundational to
Christianity.
Therefore holy brethren, partakers, participants,
co-participants to the heavenly calling focus your attention and thought on the
commissioned high priest of our belief system, Christ Jesus.
Then we come to another construction in the second
verse. Remember the second verse is a continuation of the first verse. There is
no verse number breaking this apart in the original Greek.
NKJ Hebrews 3:2 who was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was faithful in all His house.
The way it is translated in most translations is as a
relative clause, “who was faithful”. Here we get into a little stipulation of technicality
of Greek grammar. The word for “was” is actually the present active participle
of the verb eimi. It doesn’t have an
article with it. When I teach basic grammar and syntax of participles, I
usually emphasize that it is easy to tell the difference.
Let’s back up a minute. A participle is a verbal
adjective. That means sometimes it acts like a verb and sometimes it acts like
an adjective. The way you tell the difference is whether or not it has an
article. Verbs don’t have articles. So there is an article there that tells you
it functions more like a noun or an adjective. When it does, it either
functions as a noun or it functions as a relative clause like “who was”. We
don’t have an article there. As soon as you don’t see an article there, you
know it’s probably not a relative clause. If it lacks the article it is going
to function more like a verb or an adverb. The adverb can have various shades
of meaning. The one that fits this context is an adverbial participle of cause.
So if we read the two passages together we would read…
Literal
translation: Consider
(or focus or concentrate) on Christ Jesus because He was faithful
That is why we focus on Christ in this context because
He was faithful in the testing that God took Him through so that test after
test after test after test, suffering after suffering after suffering He
consistently relied upon the problem solving devices. He depended on God the
Holy Spirit. He didn’t try to solve the trials and testing in His personal
spiritual life by falling back on His deity. He never sinned. He never
committed a sin. He never disobeyed God. So because He was faithful throughout
that spiritual growth process, we are to concentrate on Him. We are to focus on
Him. He is our model. He is the precedent setter. He is the captain of our
salvation as the New King James puts it back in verse 10. He is the precedent
setter. He is the pathfinder. He is the pioneer. All of those nuances are part
of that word. So you lose the thrust if you don’t translate verse 2
correctly.
We are going to bring in Moses but before we do we
have to run around in the Old Testament a little bit. When we see this first
phrase (that He was faithful to Him who appointed Him or because He was
faithful to Him who appointed Him) it takes us back to a phraseology in I
Chronicles 17:14. The word in the Greek is poieo,
the basic word for to do or to make or to appoint or to elevate. It has various
shades of meaning. It takes us back to I Chronicles 17:14. God is speaking
NKJ 1 Chronicles 17:14 "And I will establish him in My house and in My kingdom forever;
and his throne shall be established forever."
We haven’t gotten there yet but “house” is a major
term in the first 6 verses of Hebrews 3.
What is the context of I Chronicles 17:14? The context
is a reiteration of the Davidic Covenant. The Davidic Covenant establishes what?
It establishes the sonship, Jesus Christ’s sonship of David, that title. That
is why I took the time to go back and gives us a little review that when you talk
about the Son in Hebrews it brings to bear these titles that He is the Son of
David and the Son of Man. That’s the background.
Who is he writing to? Remember the audience is Jewish
believers who are being tested, going through adversity and wanting to chunk
their Christianity and go back to Judaism. So there are these connections going
on and the allusion here in the first part of Hebrews 3:2 is to the appointment
of the Davidic Son.
So we pick of the context of I Chronicles 17:13-15.
NKJ 1 Chronicles 17:13 "I will be his Father, and he shall be My son; and I will not take
My mercy away from him, as I took it from
him who was before you. 14
"And I will establish him in My house and in My kingdom forever; and his
throne shall be established forever." ' " 15 According to
all these words and according to all this vision, so Nathan spoke to David.
It is talking about the heir of David. The fact that
he is talking about the heir of David - picking it up from the previous context
- that indicates humanity doesn’t it? He is a physical descendent of David. So
right there we have the idea that this person is going to be a human being
because He is a descendent of David.
That is an allusion to Saul because of his
disobedience and rebelliousness.
This terminology “My house” is crucial to the interpretation
of Hebrews 3:1-6. My house is that domain of people over whom God has
authority.
The implication there is if this person is going to
have a throne that is established forever then He must pick up some divine
attributes otherwise as a human being He would die. The implication here is
that not only that He is human but also divine. It is not the kind of
implication that leaps right out at you. It is embedded within the terminology
here.
So we see this concept of being appointed “in My
house” as a backdrop for Hebrews 3:2.
That appointment has to do with his Davidic
sonship.
There is an ellipsis. It leaves out the concept of
faithful, but that is the comparison. Christ is faithful in His task. Moses is
faithful in his task. That is the point of comparison.
The term house can have various meanings. It can refer
to a dynasty; but here it has to do with a community of people, a community of
believers. Christ is going to be faithful to His house. That is the community
of believers that He is over which is Church Age believers. And Moses is
faithful in his house. Some of your versions capitalize that. In the original
the “his” isn’t capitalized. So the question we have to answer is are we
talking about His house being God’s house or are we talking about his house
being that domain that God has given – that realm of responsibility that
God has given - to Moses? I believe
it should be a lower case. It’s up for debate, but I believe it should be lower
case. Moses is faithful in his house. That is Israel. Christ is faithful in His
house. Skip down to verse 6.
NKJ Hebrews 3:6 but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold
fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.
That is where we pick up that sonship idea out of the Davidic Covenant.
It’s in contrast to the house that Moses is over. That
indicates that the Mosaic house is Israel and the house that Christ is over is
the church. So the comparison picks up Moses and his faithfulness.
His house is in contrast to the house that Moses is
over. That indicates that the Mosaic house is Israel and the house that Christ
is over is the church. The comparison picks up Moses and his faithfulness.
Let’s go back to the Old Testament and look at a key
passage on Moses’ faithfulness.
Here is a tremendous prophecy that God will give a
prophet in the latter days that will be greater than Moses.
NKJ Deuteronomy 18:15 " The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from
your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear,
Moses is speaking. That is a prophecy that was
fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now if you turn to Numbers 12 you have to understand a
little bit about the context. In the middle of the book of Numbers there are
three complaints by Israel where they are griping and complaining against God
and then there are three rebellions. The first complaint has to do with the
people complaining in general towards God and God judges them with some sort of
brush fire or grass fire around the camp. That’s in Numbers 11:1-3. Then there
is a second complaint where they complain about the food. They want to go back
to the leeks and garlics of Egypt. They don’t like the manna that they are having
to eat on a daily basis. God punishes them by sending quail in their midst. They
kill so many and eat so much that they become sick and God sends a plague of
food poisoning or something like that among them. Then you have the third
complaint that comes up in Numbers 12. This is the complaint of Miriam and
Aaron. They start complaining about Moses being the head leader because of the
Cushite or Ethiopian woman he marries. So he has taken another wife who is
Ethiopian or Cushite and they have a problem with him getting married again. So
they want to make an issue about that.
NKJ Numbers 12:2 So they said, "Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has
He not spoken through us also?" And the LORD heard it.
“We are as good as you are!” They don’t recognize that
everybody is as good as anyone else. But they don’t recognize that there are
different positions of authority for different people. So it’s an authority
issue. All through here we see that the Israelites fail to understand authority
orientation. In their complaining and griping they aren’t oriented to the plan
of God.
Then following these three complaints there are three
rebellions that take place. This is not a rebellion. This is just a complaint.
NKJ Numbers 12:3 (Now the man Moses was very
humble, more than all men who were on
the face of the earth.)
Now let me put it to you. If you have 2 ½ to 3 ½
million griping and complaining and spiritually carnal people that you are
leading through the wilderness, you are not some mealy-mouthed, weak-kneed
leader who gets pushed around by everybody. That is not what humble means.
People in our society have a hard, hard time defining
the terms humble, humility or meek. All of these terms relate to one another
and are often different words used to translate the root Greek words for
humility and meekness. We think it means to be some sort of passive doormat
that everybody walks over and walks on top of. But that doesn’t fit Moses or
anything that we know about Moses. So we have to correct our understanding of
these words.
What does humility mean in the Scripture? Humility
means proper authority orientation and submission to your authority in its
context. It relates to the fact that Moses was more authority oriented (and his
orientation is to the authority God) than any man on the earth. You have the
same concept of humility in Philippians 2:5-11 where we have the famous kenosis
passage that we covered recently. Jesus humbled Himself by being obedient to
the point of death. What is humility mean in the context? Just think about
it. He humbled Himself by being
what? By being obedient. The core idea of humility and meekness is that you are
oriented to proper authority and submissive to that authority. It doesn’t mean
that you are some weak wimpy person that has no backbone, no stamina, no
strength, no conviction and you let people run all over you. The implication
here is that Moses is the most authority oriented person on the face of the
earth.
Now look what happens. The Lord calls for Moses. He
has heard their wining and complaining. The Lord calls for a meeting. Trust me
when the Lord calls for a meeting they ought to be shaking a little bit.
Let’s go to the tabernacle.
NKJ Numbers 12:5 Then the LORD came down in the pillar of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and
called Aaron and Miriam. And they both went forward.
I am having a tough time visualizing how Miriam and
Aaron are standing there complaining about Moses and here comes this cloud that
descends out of heaven. Just think of the special effects Hollywood could do
with this. This has got to be an impressive scene. They want to stand up and complain. Carnality and arrogance
know no bounds. It’s just amazing how tenacious arrogance is.
God comes down to them.
NKJ Numbers 12:6 Then He said, "Hear now My words: If there is a
prophet among you, I, the LORD, make
Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream.
In other words, the normal operating procedure for
prophecy is that “I speak through a vision or a dream”. But that is not how He
does it with Moses.
NKJ Numbers 12:7 Not so with My servant Moses; He is
faithful in all My house.
Have we read that somewhere before? What is the
comparison in Hebrews 3:2?
NKJ Hebrews 3:2 who was faithful to Him who appointed Him, as Moses also was faithful in all His house.
Where do you think that came from? The writer of
Hebrews is referring directly back to this episode in Numbers 12. Moses is the
most authority oriented human being. But, Christ is higher. Moses is the
highest prophet of all time. Deuteronomy 18 But Christ is higher. There is this
implicit superiority in the person of Jesus Christ as the appointed Son.
So we go back to the Miriam and Aaron complaint. God
speaks.
NKJ Numbers 12:8 I speak with him face to face, Even plainly, and not in dark sayings;
And he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid To speak against
My servant Moses?"
For the other prophets it was through a dream or
vision. It is direct with Moses.
He sees the form of the Lord. It may be His backside,
but he sees the form of the Lord.
He sort of slices them and dices them. Why weren’t you
afraid? Where was your humility?
The anger of the Lord is the judicial operation of His
righteousness. It is an anthropopathism for the operation of His justice.
NKJ Numbers 12:9 So the anger of the LORD was aroused against them, and He departed.
NKJ Numbers 12:10 And when the cloud departed from above the tabernacle, suddenly Miriam became leprous, as white as snow. Then Aaron turned toward Miriam, and there she was,
a leper.
That is not the kind of leprosy that we have. It is a
skin disease. We are not sure what it was. Aaron turns toward Miriam and there
she was a leper. I wonder how Aaron handled that because nothing happens to
Aaron. He turns and looks at her and she has just been covered in skin sores
and her skin is about half eaten away. She has turned into the scariest, awful
looking thing you can imagine. He is probably thinking, “What is going to
happen to me next?”
NKJ Numbers 12:11 So Aaron said to Moses, "Oh, my lord! Please do not lay this sin on us, in which we have done
foolishly and in which we have sinned.
This is called remorse, but it seems like it is
genuine repentance. He is instantly straightened out. He pleads with Moses to
pray to God.
NKJ Numbers 12:12 "Please do not let her be as one dead, whose flesh is half consumed
when he comes out of his mother's womb!"
God then intercedes for her in verse 13.
NKJ Numbers 12:13 So Moses cried out to the LORD, saying, "Please heal her, O God, I
pray!"
God responds.
NKJ Numbers 12:14 Then the LORD said to Moses, "If her father had
but spit in her face, would she not be shamed seven days? Let her be shut out
of the camp seven days, and afterward she may be received again."
That is the least punishment that she deserves, to be
removed from the people. So she is. The point of this whole episode is to
indicate the authority God has given Moses over his house. He was faithful in
his house. That is the community of believers that God placed Moses over.
Let’s go back to Hebrews 3.
NKJ Hebrews 3:3 For this One has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch
as He who built the house has more honor than the house.
Remember, what’s the main idea here? Don’t lose the
forest for the trees. The main idea is to focus on Jesus because He is
faithful. He is writing to a
Jewish audience. What about Moses? Moses was faithful. Moses was the greatest
prophet of the Old Testament. What
about Moses? The answer is that Jesus is superior to Moses.
This is a simple little analogy. Jesus Christ has more
honor than Moses. If you take a home builder, the architect-designer-builder
has more honor than what he produces. Moses is a creature. Jesus Christ is the creator.
Therefore as the creator, He is worthy of more glory than Moses who is simply a
creature. That creaturliness will be developed in verse 5.
The analogy continues in verse 4.
NKJ Hebrews 3:4 For every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God.
These communities, the community of Israel in the Old
Testament, the community of Jewish believers, and the community of Church Age
believers in the New Testament, are all under the authority of God. There are
two separate communities here.
NKJ Hebrews 3:5 And Moses indeed was faithful
in all His house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which would be
spoken afterward,
I believe that should be a lower case “his”.
The word here for servant is not the word doulos that you normally find in the
Greek. It is translated slave or servant. It is the Greek word therapon. A therapon was someone who served someone else out of his own free
will. He is not a slave. He is not hired. He serves someone out of his own
positive volition. It is a term of high praise for Moses. Moses isn’t a servant
as in the case of a slave. He is a
servant as one who has freely given himself to the position of serving God. Moses
can’t be painted in higher praise than we have in these verses. But, above
Moses there is Jesus Christ. That’s why we focus on Jesus Christ because Jesus
Christ is the pattern for our sanctification, not Moses or the Mosaic Law or
the Old Testament. It is Jesus Christ who is the pathfinder, the pioneer, and the
completer of our doctrine. Hebrews 12:2
So Moses was faithful. Moses was honorable. He should
be praised. But he is only a free will servant in the house.
NKJ Hebrews 3:6 but Christ as a Son over His own house, whose house we are if we hold
fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.
As the Son of David, He is over His house. He has His
own people, His own community of believers. “… if we hold fast.”
That is the key interpretive phrase that helps us
understand all of this terminology about house. We are in that community.
Then there is a third class condition. The third class
condition is kind of funny. Normally for simplicity’s sake I will talk about
the third class condition as maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. But if you read
the grammars, in the technical language of the grammars it says that it is a condition
of more probability. So even in a third class condition, the nuance here is
that whose house we are and we are even though it is a third class
condition.
The implication is that we work out our position by
holding fast that confidence, that future hope, to the end and not give up, not
drift away as they were being tested to do in this particular community.
This brings us the end of this second section that
emphasizes the role of Jesus Christ as our pioneer in establishing the pattern
for the Christian life. It’s not the Old Testament. It’s not Moses. It’s not
the Mosaic Law. It’s not the Ten Commandments. It’s not the ritual of the Old
Testament. It’s not the morality of the Old Testament. It is the person of the
Lord Jesus Christ who sets the pattern.
So we are to concentrate on Him because He was
faithful to the one who established Him.
The warning strikes home starting in verse 7. There is
a challenge and then there will be a warning.
This is a tremendous section. Once again it quotes extensively from the Old Testament. It relates to the wilderness wanderings. We will have to go back and walk around the Old Testament a little bit. It talks about Joshua as well and then it ties everything together in a concluding section in verses 4:14-16. We will start getting into that warning section next time.